accepted
allotment of tribal territory is largely conjectural. North of the
Forth all is conjecture pure and simple, so far as the location of
the various Caledonian sub-clans is concerned. We only know that there
were about a dozen of them; the Cornavii, Carini, Carnonacae,
Cerones, Decantae, Epidii, Horestae, Lugi, Novantae, Smertae, Taexali,
Vacomagi, and Vernicomes. Some of these may be alternative names.

G. 7.--The practical importance of the above-mentioned natural
divisions of the island is testified to by the abiding character of
the corresponding political divisions. The resemblance which at once
strikes the eye between the map of Roman and Saxon Britain is no mere
coincidence. Physical considerations brought about the boundaries
between the Roman "provinces" and the Anglo-Saxon principalities
alike. Thus a glance will show that Britannia Prima, Britannia
Secunda, Maxima Caesariensis, and Flavia Caesariensis correspond to
the later Wessex, Wales, Northumbria, and Mercia (with its dependency
East Anglia).[49] And even the sub-divisions remained approximately
the same. In Anglo-Saxon times, for example, the Midlands were still
divided into the same four tribal territories; the North Mercians
holding that of the British Cornavii, the South Mercians that of the
Dobuni, the Middle Angles that of the Coritani, and the South Angles
that of the Cateuchlani. So also the Icenian kingdom, with its old
boundaries, became that of the East Angles, and the Trinobantian that
of the East Saxons.

G. 8.--What the entire population of Britain may have numbered at the
Roman Conquest is, again, purely a matter of guess-work. But it may
well have been not very different in amount from what it was at the
Norman Conquest, when the entries in Domesday roughly show that the
whole of England (south of the Humber) was inhabited about as thickly
as the Lake District at the present day, and contained some two
million souls. The primary hills, and the secondary plateaux, where
now we find the richest corn lands of the whole country, were in
pre-Roman times covered with virgin forest. But in the river valleys
above the level of the floods were to be found stretches of good open
plough land, and the chalk downs supplied excellent grazing. Where
both were combined, as in the valleys of the Avon and Wily near
Salisbury, and that of the Frome near Dorchester, we have the ideal
site for a Celtic settlement. In such places we accordingly find t