btful knowledge that can be drawn from
them. Through this period, however, successive races seem to have
invaded and settled the country, combining with their predecessors, or
living alongside of them, or in some cases, perhaps, exterminating
them.

When contemporary written records begin, just before the beginning of
the Christian era, one race, the Britons, was dominant, and into it
had merged to all appearances all others. The Britons were a Celtic
people related to the inhabitants of that part of the Continent of
Europe which lies nearest to Britain. They were divided into a dozen
or more separate tribes, each occupying a distinct part of the
country. They lived partly by the pasturing of sheep and cattle,
partly by a crude agriculture. They possessed most of the familiar
grains and domestic animals, and could weave and dye cloth, make
pottery, build boats, forge iron, and work other metals, including
tin. They had, however, no cities, no manufactures beyond the most
primitive, and but little foreign trade to connect them with the
Continent. At the head of each tribe was a reigning chieftain of
limited powers, surrounded by lesser chiefs. The tribes were in a
state of incessant warfare one with the other.

*3. Roman Britain.*--This condition of insular isolation and barbarism
was brought to a close in the year 55 B.C. by the invasion of the
Roman army. Julius Caesar, the Roman general who was engaged in the
conquest and government of Gaul, or modern France, feared that the
Britons might bring aid to certain newly subjected and still restless
Gallic tribes. He therefore transported a body of troops across the
Channel and fought two campaigns against the tribes in the southeast
of Britain. His success in the second campaign was, however, not
followed up, and he retired without leaving any permanent garrison in
the country. The Britons were then left alone, so far as military
invasion was concerned, for almost a century, though in the meantime
trade with the adjacent parts of the Continent became more common, and
Roman influence showed itself in the manners and customs of the
people. In the year 44 A.D., just ninety years after Caesar's
campaigns, the conquest of Britain was resumed by the Roman armies and
completed within the next thirty years. Britain now became an integral
part of the great, well-ordered, civilized, and wealthy Roman Empire.
During the greater part of that long period, Britain enjoyed profound