Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/58

46 the defensive, for Cæsar adds "these frequent alarms obliged us to be much on our guard, nor would he allow the cavalry to remove to any distance from the legions, or to pillage and destroy the country, unless where the foot was present to sustain them." Notwithstanding all his vast preparations for this second invasion it is also clear that Cæsar found so little to encourage him to persevere in his attempts to conquer the island that he found it advisable to return with his whole army the same year into Gaul. He does not seem to have advanced one hundred miles into the island, and therefore could have had little means of judging personally of the people so that we must take some of his reports with distrust, though we may rely on the accuracy of his statements from his own observation. Thus when he says that there was an infinite multitude of men in the island and very many buildings (hominum est infinita multitudo creberrimaque ædificia) similar to those of the Gauls, and that they had a great number of cattle, and that the people of Kent in their manners resembled the Gauls, we may fully admit the correctness of his statements, but of what he states of the people in the interior we may doubt the correctness, as they must have proceeded from mere reports without impeaching his truthfulness. Strabo while repeating similar reports says expressly "But we have given even these statements with hesitation as depending on no certain testimony" adding as to their cannibalism that that custom prevailed among the Scythians and under the restraints of a siege many other nations are said to do the same.

Taking then Cæsar's statement that the Britons he saw resembled the Gauls, whose manners and customs we have had detailed to us by other writers, I wish to contend that the Britons were even superior to the Gauls for the reasons I have to give, and that if the Gauls possessed any claim to be considered civilized, the Britons were at least equally so. If the Britons had as Cæsar says abundance of cattle, it is clear they were a farming and producing people. If they had abundance of corn growing as proved by his own accounts, they must have been an agricultural people; and if they had as he says a vast number of ædificia, by which we must understand something more than common habitations, then they must have been a people of settled habits and institutions. They must in fact have attained a considerable degree of civilization which though perhaps somewhat different from that of the Romans could not have been justly considered vastly inferior.

It is true Cæsar says also that the people of the interior