homage of a mighty king. In the hands of his fanatical
followers the scimitar became the symbol of the Mohammedan faith and
hundreds of thousands were conquered and made to acknowledge its power.
To-day Mohammedanism is still one of the great religions of the world,
and the name of the Prophet still sounds from thousands of mosques,
when the muezin calls the people to prayer with the same words that
were used while Mohammed was living.

CHAPTER VI

ALFRED THE GREAT

More than a thousand years ago England was composed of a number of
small kingdoms, which were as separate and distinct as the nations of
the world are to-day. They were either making war upon each other, or
looking on at the wars of their neighbors; and it seemed impossible,
and nobody ever dreamed at that time, that England and Scotland and
Wales would be united into one great state.

Among these people were the yellow-haired Saxons, who had entered
England as invaders and driven the Celts to the westward. The Saxons
brought with them the ideas that they practised in the region north of
Gaul, whence they came. They refused to live in walled towns, and tore
down or abandoned the buildings left by the Romans, erecting their own
mud huts outside the ramparts. Their homes were rude indeed, and they
had few comforts and luxuries. Glass was unknown to them, and the cold
rain and wind swept through their dwellings. They had no books in their
own tongue, and got all their learning from a few scholars and priests.
But in spite of all these drawbacks they were a brave and hardy people,
lacking only a great leader to become a nation whose influence would be
felt throughout the world.

For a time, however, no such leader appeared; and it seemed as if they
must be swept away entirely by a new enemy that came upon them from the
north--a people called respectively the Danes, the Northmen and the
Vikings, who lived on the shores of the creeks and fiords of what is
now Denmark and the Scandinavian peninsula--a wild and hardy race of
sailors, who loved fighting and gained their livelihood by piracy,
sweeping forth in their open boats upon unprotected shores and burning
and plundering wherever they went.

The Northmen, who were great seamen, speedily found out that because
the British Isles were divided into numerous small nations, there would
be no concerted resistance when they came to plunder; and forthwith the
people in the English kingdoms of Wessex and M