Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/230

216 route from the south as the West Saxon armies is shown by the ethnological evidence and by the dialects. Beddoe, referring to the south of Hampshire, says: ‘The Saxon and Frisian types undoubtedly spread from this centre far to the north and west, predominating in a great part of Berkshire and central Oxfordshire, and occupying in force the valleys which radiate from Salisbury among the Wiltshire Downs.’ Referring more especially to the people of Wilts, he also says: ‘I do not mean that the Wiltshire people are anything like pure Saxons or Frisians; I should be quite satisfied if it were granted that they were at least half Saxon.’ The prevalence of the blonde type in parts of Hants, Wilts, and Dorset is one of the chief points in the present physical characters of the inhabitants of these counties. Beddoe says: ‘Hampshire bears witness that it was a starting-point of Saxon colonization by the blonde character of the population.’ He also speaks of the ‘blonde, smooth-featured Saxons about Wilton,’ and tells us that ‘the blonde types are common from Wareham to Yeovil.’

In Hampshire, however, we do not meet with a general blonde type. Of the New Forest district Mackintosh says: ‘The New Forest is inhabited by a mixture of races which almost defy classification, the complexion in general being dark;’ and this prevalence of dark-complexioned people among the inhabitants of the New Forest district is still apparent, as it is in parts of Wiltshire and Dorset.

The same ethnological observer, Mackintosh, also says: ‘In the middle and north of Hampshire the people in general belong to a dark-complexioned race. I have heard the opinion expressed that they are Wends, or a Belgic tribe of Wendish extraction.’ The present writer is not able to regard the dark-complexioned type as being