330 A TOPOGRAPHICAL ARGUMENT IN FAVOUR OF THE 
to the streams and rivers of England, who gave names to the 
streams, and rivers, and lochs, and mountains, and headlands, and 
valleys of Scotland, must have been the same people who gave names 
to the streams and rivers, to the lochs and mountains and hillocks, 
to the headlands and valleys of Ireland. So far as a topographical 
argument can be admitted to be of much avail or consequence—and 
it is difficult to understand why, in the determining of questions 
that affect the settlement of countries in the far-off past, great 
value ought not to be attached to topographical names it must be 
conceded that, without considering the presence of a previous race in 
the British Isles, there is sufficient evidence that the Gaels pre- 
ceded the Cymry, and that in England, Scotland and Ireland the 
Gaels have left indelible traces of their presence at a remote time. 
There is certainly very much to justify the conjecture of Nicholas, 
who, in his “ Pedigree of the English People,” (p. 46), thus writes : 
“In the absence of historic record, we are justified in presuming 
on grounds of antecedent probability that Ireland would receive its 
first inhabitants from Wales or Scotland. Wonderful explorers 
were those ancient Celts. Probably they soon pushed their way 
through thicket and swamp to the Highlands of Scotland, and find- 
ing there an end to their territory, they there, from the highest 
eminences, looked out westward and descried the misty coast of the 
Green Isle. The first tribes to arrive in Britain would probably be 
the first settlers in Scotland and Ireland. Pressed toward the 
interior by subsequent arrivals, nomadic hordes but slightly attached 
to any particular spot, they would readily move forward to new 
pasturages rather than long contend for the old. The Gaelic or 
Gadhelice people, therefore, may be presumed to have had the advan- 
tage of priority of occupation.” Aristotle, the first writer who 
refers to Britain, says: “ Beyond the pillars of Hercules, the ocean 
flows round the earth, and in it are two very large islands called 
British (Spetravixae Acyouévat) Albin and Ierne lying beyond the 
Keltoi.” By the term A/b/n Aristotle must have intended that 
portion of the British Isles now embraced by England and Scotland. 
The Scottish Gaels still speak of their country as Albin, and of 
themselves as A/bannaich, thereby showing that, if there is any 
force in the reference of Aristotle, they are the representatives of 
the earliest inhabitants of Albin, or of England and Scotland. 
