Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/20

 This is proved also by the fact that the older MSS. contain a separate dedication of each of the books.

The first book, as was usual with the historians, or rather chroniclers of that period, begins with the deluge. Cosmas, however, somewhat mercifully devotes but little space to this early period and soon devotes his attention to matters that have a more immediate connexion with Bohemia. His account of the arrival of the Čechs in Bohemia is very interesting. It is hardly necessary to mention that they were not the original inhabitants of the country, but that a Celtic and then a Teutonic tribe previously resided in Bohemia. At the time of the migration of the nations, the Völkerwanderung, as the Germans call it, the Teutonic tribe of the Marcomanni were replaced by the Slavic tribe of the Čechs, whose previous residence was probably that part of Poland now known as the Austrian province of Galicia. After giving a quaint description of the solitudes of Bohemia for curiously no record of the pre-Slavic inhabitants of Bohemia seems then to have existed Cosmas describes the arrival in Bohemia of the Slavs under their eponymous leader Čechus. He states that the Řip (in German Georgsberg), that is mountain of St. George, a high hill near Roudnic overlooking the Elbe, was the site of the first Čech settlement in Bohemia. This statement has since been repeated by numerous Bohemian historians, and it is probably historically correct. I will quote the account of Cosmas; he writes: ‘When the leader of the Čechs entered these solitudes it is uncertain by how many men, seeking spots fit for human dwelling-places, he was accompanied. He surveyed the mountains, the valleys, the wild and the fertile regions, with a sagacious