80 



foreign to us. The history of our own nation is on the contrary 

 made to begin upon the European continent, and only tolerated 

 as beginning here with the Teutonic invasion ; and the books, in 

 which this mutilation has been submitted to, are lauded in 

 journals that seem to have that special purpose : whilst every 

 phenomenon that demonstrates our present relation to the 

 subjugated races, is not only eagerly controverted but actively 

 stifled. 



It is now intended to give some reasons for believing that the 

 group of mountainous hills, which bounds this prospect to the 

 south, and which covers a large portion of the southern district 

 of Dorset, is, or has been until comparatively recent times, one 

 of the unabsorbed insulations, above referred to, of this more 

 ancient people ; by the help of indications that are in like 

 manner also found, in other such hilly fastnesses naturally 

 favouring this condition. 



At one of the earlier stages of the invasion of Britain by the 

 West Saxons, these occupied the broad valley which lies before 

 us, now known as the Yale of Blackmore ; and during more 

 than one hundred years it must have continued to be their most 

 western possession. The record of this is the Anglo-Saxon 

 Chronicle. Their first landing had been more than fifty years 

 still earlier (A.D. 495), at a place, called after Cerdic, the leader 

 " Cerdices ora," which has been variously explained as Charford, 

 Yarmouth, and the mouth of the Hamble in Southampton 

 Water ; but more probably was Hengistbury Head at the mouth 

 of the Salisbury Avon : along the valley of which river they 

 continued their fiercely contested advance, until in A.D. 552 



