Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/200

186 evidence of the runic inscriptions which have been found within it. The most important of them are those discovered on two large stones at Sandwich. These were fixed monuments, and the inscriptions must therefore be identified with the people who lived near them. These monuments could not have been brought from Gothland or any other Northern land, as personal ornaments with old runic inscriptions could. Stephens says: ‘These are evidently heathen stones. Such stones would not have been erected after Kent was christianised—say, A.D. 600 at latest. They could not have been raised over dead Vikings, for the High North had by this time cast aside the old Northern stave, and adopted the Scandinavian alphabet, or futhorc.’ This opinion from the greatest writer on runic monuments is valuable as showing that the runic letters on the Sandwich stones are old Northern Gothic, and not the later Scandian; that these monumental inscriptions are pre-Christian, and consequently of a date not later than the end of the sixth century. This discovery, therefore, proves the settlement of Northern Goths on the east coast of Kent. As the runic monuments have been discovered chiefly in the east of the county, it was presumably there that the Goths mainly settled.

The people in some parts of Kent exhibit in many respects the typical Frisian race characters. Those observed in Friesland at the present time have been described by Lubach as ‘a tall, slender frame; a longish oval, flat skull, with prominent occiput; a long, oval face, with flat cheek-bones; a long nose, straight or aquiline, the point drooping below the wings; a high under-jaw and a well-developed chin.’ Many years ago Macintosh drew attention to somewhat similar features prevalent among the people of West Kent. He says: ‘The Jutian characters are prevalent about Tonbridge,’ and are ‘a narrow face,