24 SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN BY NORTHMEN. 



witness to a fierce and warlike character displayed by the 

 aboriginal inhabitants. 



From the preceding pages we see that Franks and Saxons 

 are continually mentioned together, and it is only in the 

 North we can find antiquities of a most warlike and seafaring 

 people, who must have formed the great and preponderating 

 bulk of the invading host who conquered Britain. 



Britain after a continuous immigration from the North, 

 which lasted several hundred years, became the most powerful 

 colony of the Northern tribes, several of whose chiefs claimed 

 a great part of England even in the seventh century. After- 

 wards she asserted her independence, though she did not 

 get it until after a long and tedious struggle with the North, 

 the inhabitants and kings of which continued to try to assert 

 the ancient rights their forefathers once possessed. Then the 

 time came when the land upon which the people of these 

 numerous tribes had settled became more powerful and more 

 populous than the mother country ; a case which has found 

 several parallels in the history of the world. To-day the 

 people of England as they look over the broad Atlantic may 

 perhaps discern the same process gradually taking place. 

 In the people of the United States of North America, the 

 grandest and most colossal state founded by England or 

 any other country of which we have any historical record, we 

 may recognise the indomitable courage, the energy and spirit 

 which was one of the characteristics of the Northern race to 

 whom a great part of the people belong. The first settlement 

 of the country, territory by territory, State by State the 

 frontier life with its bold adventures, innumerable dangers, 

 fights, struggles, privations and heroism is the grandest 

 drama that has ever been enacted in the history of the world. 

 The time is not far distant, if the population of the United 

 States and Canada increases in the same ratio as it has done for 

 more than a hundred years, when over three or four hundred 

 millions of its people will speak the English tongue ; and I 

 think it is no exaggeration to say that in the course of time 

 one hundred millions more will be added, from Australia, New 

 Xcaland and other colonies which to-day form part of the British 

 Empire, but which are destined to become independent nations. 



