ich can be recognized
throughout all north-eastern Germany by the terminations in _its,
enz, ik_, or _ow_. In A.D. 1637 the line of the old Pomeranian dukes
expired, and the country fell to Brandenburg, with the exception of
that part which Sweden usurped at the peace of Westphalia. The island
of Ruegen, which till A.D. 1478 had its own native princes, belonged
to this latter. It is the principal seat of German-Slavic
antiquities. The ancient Rugians and their gods are mentioned by
Tacitus, and described by Saxo Grammaticus. The old chronicles and
legends, founded on still older traditions, speak of a large and
flourishing city named Vineta on the small island Wollin, south-east
of Ruegen, once the principal seat of the western Slavic commerce,
and, as Herder calls it, the Slavic Amsterdam. This city is said by
some to have been destroyed by the Danes; by others to have been
ingulfed in the sea by the sinking of the ground beneath it. Modern
inquirers, however, have doubted whether it ever existed; and, hard
as it is to renounce the many poetical associations attached to such
a subject,--so similar to those which fill the mind in thinking of
Pompeii and Herculaneum,--their objections have not yet been
satisfactorily refuted.

The third separate branch of the Vendish stem were the Ukrians, or
Border-Vendes, Germ. _Ukern,_ from _Ukraina_, border. They lived in
the territory which afterwards became the margravate of Brandenburg,
and were divided into several tribes, as the Hevelli on the banks of
the Havel, the Retarians, etc. Their situation was such, that constant
conflicts between them and the guardians or watch of the German
frontiers, the Saxon margraves on the other side of the Elbe, were
unavoidable. These served gradually to extend the German _marches_ or
frontiers further and further, until in the year 1134 Albert the Bear,
count of Ascania, finally conquered the Vendes. The Slavic inhabitants
of this region were cruelly and completely destroyed; the country was
repeopled by German and Dutch colonists, and given as a fief by the
emperor to Albert the Bear, the first margrave of Brandenburg.
Brandenburg was the German form for _Brannibor_, the most considerable
of the Vendish cities, after which the country was called. The names
of places, many of them altered in a similar manner, are indeed the
only weak traces of the Vendish language once spoken in this part of
Germany. No tribe of the Vendes seems to have been