Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/31

Rh survival proof of the settlement of people of several different tribes.

Like a stream which can be followed up to many sources, the Anglo-Saxon race may be traced to many tribal origins. It is not the purpose of this book to describe the conquest of England, but rather its settlement by the conquering tribes and races. With this object in view, it is necessary to give attention rather to the sites of settlements than the sites of battles, to the arrangements of villages rather than the campaigns by which the districts in which those villages are situated were opened to settlement. It is not within its scope to ascertain the number of conquered British people slain on any occasion, but rather to find the evidence which indicates that some of them must have been spared in parts of the country, and lived side by side with their conquerors, to become in the end blended with them as part of a new race. It is within its scope to show that in various parts of England people of diverse tribes became settled near to each other, in some districts one tribe preponderating, and in some another, a preponderance which has produced ethnological differences that have survived to the present time, and has left differences in dialects that bear witness to diversities in their origin. 2