Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/92

78 Hesse also, says Latham, word for word is Chatti. The Old Frisian ch was equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon h. We may therefore accept the identity of the sounds chauc- and hoc- in the names Chauci and Hocings, and this will be of interest in reference to traces of them in England. At some time during the period of the growth of the Frank confederation the Chaucians assumed the name of Franks, and their name disappeared from history.

Pliny’s description of part of Frisia and the condition of some of its inhabitants may be overdrawn, but there is in it a sufficient element of truth to warrant the belief that foreign expeditions, with a view to settlements in a land more favoured by Nature, could not have been unpopular among them. Two or three days’ sail would bring them to the coasts of Britain, where, if they could form colonies sufficiently strong to resist attacks, they could at least find a better subsistence, with more favourable conditions of life than those Pliny describes. He says: ‘In this spot the wretched natives occupying either the tops of hills or artificial mounds of turf raised out of the reach of the highest tides build their small cottages, which appear like sailing-vessels when the water covers the circumjacent ground, and like wrecks when it has retired. For fuel they use a kind of mud taken up by hand and dried rather in the wind than the sun, and with this earth they heat their food and warm their bodies, stiffened by the rigorous North. Their only drink is rain-water collected in ditches at the thresholds of their doors.’ The reference to peat-digging, which is still extensively carried on in Friesland, the mounds on which their houses were built, and the appearance of the country, shows that this was a description of an eye-witness. The terp mounds on which the ancient