Page:Public School History of England and Canada (1892).djvu/9

 

 

1. Early Britain.—The land we call England is that part of the Island of Great Britain south of the River Tweed, with the exception of a small area on the western side, known as Wales. England covers about 50,000 square miles, and Wales a little over 7,000. Yet a great many people live in this little space, and a great many more have left its shores and settled all over the globe. The inhabitants are called English: but this was not always the case, for long before there were any English in England, the land was inhabited by at least three different races of men.

A great many years ago, when the surface of the country was very different from what it is now, and lions, tigers, elephants, and elks roamed over its plains and through its forests, a rude people, with little knowledge of tools and weapons, occupied the country. Then came another race with better weapons and some knowledge of cooking, and the care of domestic animals. Both races, however, made their weapons of stone, and for this reason are called the men of the "Old and New Stone Age." These things we know by the remains found in mounds or barrows of earth, and in caves and river-beds. Then came another race, evidently from the East, near Persia, that had some skill in working metals, such as bronze and iron. These people we call “Celts,” and they were the inhabitants found in Britain when written history first tells anything about the island.

About 600 B.C. the Phœnicians, a trading people from the Mediterranean Sea, visited the country in quest of tin; then, a 