4 History of the English Landed Interest. 



covered huts of wood, probably not unlike tliose Teutonic 

 habitations to wliicli Strabo has introduced his readers. 



But Caesar, who actually penetrated the interior, compares 

 their dwellings to those of Gaul, so that with the additional 

 help of Strabo,^ we can picture the tract of wooded country 

 and the occasional clearing surrounded by a high bank of 

 earth and fallen trees, with its protecting ditch, from which 

 the soil for the bank had been dug ; and, within, the com- 

 munity of people with their flocks and herds. Frail and 

 ephemeral these wretched structures must necessarily have 

 been, required as they were only to keep together for that 

 brief period before their restless inhabitants, like the South 

 African Boer, " trekked " to pastures new, and for another short 

 spell set up a fresh " kraal." 



We can then well believe Caesar when he states that these 

 primitive persons never sowed their lands, but were merely 

 half hunters, half herdsmen, subsisting partly on the spoils of 

 the chase, partly on the products of their live-stock. Nor have 

 we reason to doubt Strabo ^ when he mentions their ignorance 

 of gardening and inability to make cheese ; nor even Xephi- 

 lenus,^ when he asserts that they, like the Greeks of the Iliad, 

 never tasted fish ; nor should we long hesitate to credit that 

 crowning improbability of all, when Ctesar^ relates that their 

 religion forbade them to eat either hare, common fowl, or 

 goose, though they kept these creatiu'es as pets. The Druids '" 

 were stern disciplinarians, and fully appreciated the powers 

 afforded by such agencies as mystery and superstition. We 

 can picture, amidst the stunted growth of uncared-for beech 

 and pine woods the taller groups of oaks which marked the 

 groves where they performed their mystic ceremonies. How 

 scared must many a truant urchin have felt as he scudded 

 past their dread vicinity, or some belated hunter, as he spurred 

 his jaded horse in order to get quickly out of the sombre 

 depths of their shade ! Peoples who reverenced the Druidical 



» Ceesar, BaU. Gall., lib. v. ch. 1-23. 



2 Strabo, Geoyr., lib. iv. p. 278. ^ Xephilenus, lib. Ixxvi. § 12. 



" CKsar, Bell. Gall., lib. v. ch. 1-23. - Id. Ibid., lib. vi. pp. 13-20. 



