By Rev. W. BARNES, B.D. 



E can hardly take up the early history of British 

 Dorset, without finding that we bring under 

 our niinds the neighbours of the Durotriges, 

 the Belgse. of whom we should wish to know 

 something. Caesar says that the inland part 

 of Britain was inhabited by a home-born 

 and home-sprung race, and the seaboard by those who 

 for the sake of booty and warfare had come 

 over from the Belgse. CAESAR, Comm., L.V., c. 12. 



Britanniae pars interior ab iis incolitur quos natos in Insula 

 ipsa memoria prodittum dicunt ; maritima pars ab iis qui prae- 

 dse ac belli inferendi causa ex Belgis transierant, qui omnes fere 

 iis nominibus civitatum appeileantur quibus orti ex civitatibus eo 

 pervenerunt, et bello inlato ibi remanserunt, atque agros 

 colere coeperunt. 



Caesar writes also that the Belgse from whom Belgse came 

 into Britain, held one of the three shares of Gaul, and were sun- 

 dered from the true Gauls by the rivers Matrona (Marne) and 

 Sequana (Seine). They were a hardy people as being farther 

 from the Roman Province of Gaul, and had less commerce with 

 chapmen of Roman luxuries, and wore near the (Teutonic) Ger- 

 mans beyond the Rhine, with whom they were wont to war. 



Now Ptolemy puts the Belgse in Britain below the ' Atre- 

 bates"and " Cantii " of Kent, but above the Durotriges of 

 Dorset, and, gives as their main towns, Ischalis, Bath, and 



