ed freedom.
It is not the first time that we meet it: the Italians had already
fought with the offsets and advanced posts of this vast stock
on the Tiber and on the Po, in the mountains of Castile and Carinthia,
and even in the heart of Asia Minor; but it was here that the main stock
was first assailed at its very core by their attacks. The Celtic race
had on its settlement in central Europe diffused itself chiefly
over the rich river-valleys and the pleasant hill-country
of the present France, including the western districts of Germany
and Switzerland, and from thence had occupied at least the southern
part of England, perhaps even at this time all Great Britain
and Ireland;(10) it formed here more than anywhere else a broad,
geographically compact, mass of peoples. In spite of
the differences in language and manners which naturally
were to be found within this wide territory, a close mutual intercourse,
an innate sense of fellowship, seems to have knit together
the tribes from the Rhone and Garonne to the Rhine and the Thames;
whereas, although these doubtless were in a certain measure locally
connected with the Celts in Spain and in the modern Austria,
the mighty mountain barriers of the Pyrenees and the Alps
on the one hand, and the encroachments of the Romans and the Germans
which also operated here on the other, interrupted the intercourse
and the intrinsic connection of the cognate peoples far otherwise
than the narrow arm of the sea interrupted the relations
of the continental and the British Celts. Unhappily we are not
permitted to trace stage by stage the history of the internal development
of this remarkable people in these its chief seats; we must be content
with presenting at least some outline of its historical culture
and political condition, as it here meets us in the time of Caesar.

Population
Agriculture and the Rearing of Cattle

Gaul was, according to the reports of the ancients, comparatively
well peopled. Certain statements lead us to infer that in the Belgic
districts there were some 200 persons to the square mile--
a proportion such as nearly holds at present for Wales
and for Livonia--in the Helvetic canton about 245;(11) it is probable
that in the districts which were more cultivated than the Belgic
and less mountainous than the Helvetian, as among the Bituriges,
Arverni, Haedui, the number rose still higher. Agriculture
was no doubt practised in Gaul--for even the contemporaries of C