104 Stonelienge and its Barroivs. 



seliolars consider Galedin to mean the Netherlands, and perhaps, we 

 may conclude, that according to Welsh tradition, the Belgse came as 

 refugees to this country, and were first located in the Isle of Wight 

 — driven, it may be, from their own country, by some inundation of 

 the sea, an accident which appears to have been the moving cause 

 of several of those great migrations we read of in Roman history. 

 It is clear from Caesar, that for some centuries before Christ, the 

 Belgse were the most energetic and powerful, — and among half- 

 civilized races, this means the most aggressive, — of the Gaulish 

 tribes; and we can have little difficulty in supposing, that the fugitive 

 Belgse, with the aid probably of their continental brethren, might 

 soon change their character of refugees into that of assailants. Of 

 the inlets, opposite the Isle of Wight, by which the mainland could 

 be assailed, Tweon-ea (now Christchurch) at the mouth of the Stour 

 and the Avon, appears to have been one of the most important in 

 the earlier periods of our history.' Here, it would seem, the Belgse 

 landed. The uplands in the neighbourhood are barren, but the vallies 

 rich, and the Belgse, we may presume, were soon in possession of 

 the pastures along the Stour, as far as the neighbourhood of Blandford. 

 This town lies in a kind of defile, over which, at that period, the 

 woodlands of Cranbourne Chase, in all probability, extended. At 

 this wooded gorge the Britons seem to have held their own, and the 

 course of Belgic conquest to have been diverted — in the direction 

 afterwards followed by the Roman road and the modern railway — 

 into the vallies of the Piddle and the Frome. We may now ask, 

 whether there be any earthworks which might serve as boundaries to 

 the district we have thus marked out. In the first place, we observe be- 

 tween Holt Forest and Cranbourne Chase the well-known earthwork 

 called Bokerley-ditch, shutting in from the northward the rich valley 

 drained by the Wymburne-brook. From Bokerley-ditch the boun- 

 dary may have followed the outline of Cranbourne Chase, have 

 crossed the Stour south of Blandford, and then run to the north- 

 westward along Combe-bank. There were also some years back 'in 



'To illustrate this portion of the paper the writer has had recourse to Dr. 

 Guest's map appended to his paper on the " Belgic Ditches," iu vol. viii of the 

 " Archajological Journal," and has had it copied. 



