ans, harassed the land
of the West-Saxons chiefly, most of all by their _aescs_, which they had
built many years before. Then King Alfred commanded long ships to be
built to oppose the aescs; they were full-nigh twice as long as the
others; some had sixty oars, and some had more; they were both swifter
and steadier, and also higher than the others. They were shapen neither
like the Frisian nor the Danish, but so as it seemed to him that they
would be most efficient. Then some time in the same year, there came six
ships to Wight, and there did much harm, as well as in Devon, and
elsewhere along the sea-coast. Then the king commanded nine of the new
ships to go thither, and they obstructed their passage from the port
towards the outer sea. Then went they with three of their ships out
against them; and three lay in the upper part of the port in the dry;
the men were gone from them ashore. Then took they two of the three
ships at the outer part of the port, and killed the men, and the other
ship escaped; in that also the men were killed except five; they got
away because the other ships were aground. They also were aground very
disadvantageously, three lay aground on that side of the deep on which
the Danish ships were aground, and all the rest upon the other side, so
that no one of them could get to the others. But when the water had
ebbed many furlongs from the ships, the Danish men went from their three
ships to the other three which were left by the tide on their side, and
then they there fought against them. There was slain Lucumon the king's
reeve, and Wulfheard the Frisian, and AEbbe the Frisian, and AEthelhere
the Frisian, and AEthelferth the king's _geneat_, and of all the men,
Frisians and English, seventy-two; and of the Danish men one hundred and
twenty."

Lastly, we have the evidence of Procopius that "three numerous nations
inhabit Britain,--the Angles, the Frisians, and the Britons."[5]

Whatever interpretation we may put upon the preceding extracts, it is
certain that the Frisians are the nearest German representatives of our
Germanic ancestors; whilst it is not uninteresting to find that the
little island of Heligoland, is the only part of the British Empire
where the ethnological and political relations coincide.

_Gibraltar._--This isolated possession serves as a text for the
ethnology of Spain; and there is no country wherein the investigation is
more difficult.

It is difficult, if we look at the an