THE SO-CALLED SAXONS AND FRANKS. 13 



It would appear that these tribes must have come from a 

 country further eastward than the Roman provinces, and that 

 as they came with ships, their home must have been on the 

 shores of the Baltic, the Cattegat, and Norway ; in fact, 

 precisely the country which the numerous antiquities point 

 to as inhabited by an extremely warlike and maritime race, 

 which had great intercourse with the Greek and Roman world. 



The dates given by the Greek and Roman writers of the 

 maritime expeditions, invasions, and settlements of the so- 

 called Saxons and Franks agree perfectly with the date of the 

 objects found in the North, among which are numerous Roman 

 coins, and remarkable objects of Roman and Greek art, which 

 must have been procured either by the peaceful intercourse of 

 trade or by war. To this very day thousands upon thousands 

 of graves have been preserved in the North, belonging to the 

 time of the invasions of these Northmen, and to an earlier 

 period. From them no other inference can be drawn than 

 that the country and islands of the Baltic were far more 

 densely populated than any part of central and western 

 Europe and Great Britain, since the number of these earlier 

 graves in those countries is much smaller. 



Every tumulus described by antiquaries as a Saxon or 

 Frankish grave is the counterpart of a Northern grave, thus 

 showing conclusively the common origin of the people. 



Wherever graves of the same type are found in other 

 countries we have the invariable testimony, either of the 

 Roman or Greek writers of the Frankish and English 

 Chronicles or of the Sagas, to show that the people of the 

 North had been in the country at one time or another. 



The conclusion is forced upon us that in time the North 

 became over-populated, and an outlet was necessary for the 

 spread of its people. 



The story of the North is that of all countries whose 

 inhabitants have spread and conquered, in order to find new- 

 fields for their energy and over-population ; in fact, the very 

 course the progenitors of the English-speaking peoples adopted 

 in those days is precisely the one which has been followed by 

 their descendants in England and other countries for the last 



o 



three hundred years. 



