402 



KNOWLEDGE • 



[Mabch 10. 1882. 



prnpare<l with yollow |)rus«iat4! of pctasli (potassic forro- 

 cyonidi') ami iiiiiinonic nitrnto. Tlic luircnt, passing throiiRh 

 a styl'' proBHinK <>" t'"' piipor as it pnsst^d over a revolving 

 mcUil wheel, decomposed the coinpoiiiid, and left a mark 

 on the paper. There are very many other relics, far too 

 numerous ovon to mention, including .specimens of the 

 earliest laid calile.s, insulators, etc. 



What may he. regarded as an interesting curiosity is a 

 specimen of a Norwegian telegraph pole, which has heen 

 pierced through by woodpeckers in search of insects. The 

 liirds are supposed to have been deceived l>y the humming 

 of the wires, a sound which may generally be heard near 

 the poles, more particularly in still, calm weather. 



OUR ANCESTORS. 



By Gr.\nt Allkn. 

 II. — THE CELTS. 



WHILE the dark -haired and dark-skinned little 

 Euskarians were living unmolested in the western 

 coasts anil islands of Europe hewing patches out of the 

 forest with their stone hatchets, building great burrows 

 over their dead chieftains, and fighting among themselves 

 from valley to valley, like the North American Indians of 

 later days — a fairer and taller race was growing up un- 

 noticed away to the east, among the great central table- 

 lands of the Asiatic plateau. This fair-skinned, yellow- 

 haired, and blue-eyed folk is known to us by the somewhat 

 fanciful name of Aryans ; and from it the chief conquering 

 peoples of the whole Eastern hemisphere are derived. The 

 Aryans spoke a language whose nature we can infer from 

 the numerous modern dialects derived from it ; and this 

 language enables us in part to form some conception of the 

 state of culture attained by the people who used it. In their 

 earliest known condition, while they still all lived together 

 among the high plains of Asia, they were hardly, if at all, 

 superior in the arts of life to th(; Euskarians of Britain. 

 They were ignorant of the use of metals, and armed only 

 with weapons of polished stone. They fed their flocks like the 

 semi-nomad tribes which still inhabit the same regions, 

 and they tilled a little grain of some coarse cereal kind. 

 Altogether, if we regard them with calmly impartial eyes, 

 and not with the excessive filial piety of some German 

 thinkers, we shall probably be forced to admit that the 

 primitive Aryans were, on the whole, about as good and 

 as bad as most other barbaric peoples at the same period 

 of the world's history. Stronger than the neighbouring 

 nations they certainly showed themselves to be, but wiser 

 or better there is no sufficient reason to suppose thatthey 

 were. 



From their original Central Asian home, these warlike 

 Aryans began to disperse themselves as fighting colonists 

 on every side, probably some five or six thousand years 

 since. One great branch, now speaking the Celtic variety 

 of the common language, moved westward across the face 

 of Central Europe ; and its men\bers spread themselves, 

 long l>efore the beginning of w ritten history, over all the 

 western coa.sts of the continent as a conquering and supe- 

 rior race. Though at first they were only armed, like the 

 Euskarians amongst whom they came, with stone hatchets 

 and flint-tipped arrows, yet, as they were tall, big-limbed, 

 powerful men, while the I'^uskarians were comparatively 

 short, squat, defenceless folk, they seem easily to have 

 oven-un almost the whole of wh.at is now France, Spain, 

 and the Low Countries, and to have established themselves, 

 at least, as a rough aristocracy of chieftains among the con- 



quered and servile Euskarian population. But in some places 

 the Euskarians, and their kinsfolk the Ligurians and Aqui- 

 tanians, oppear to have maintained their inde[j<;ndencc ; 

 while in others, though the Celts were mast<;rs, the dark- 

 skinned aboriginal jjeople yet survived in vast numlicrg. 

 It was oidy in the most thoroughly conquered parts of the 

 continent that the pure-blooded Celts themselves formed 

 the princij)al ma.ss of the population. The independent 

 dark tribes of the extreme west retained their native 

 languagi", which lives on to our own time as the Basque 

 tongue ; but the vanquished and enslaved Euskarians of 

 the central French and Spanish regions learned to speak 

 the dialect of their Celtic lords, as they afterwards learned 

 to speak that of their Roman conquerors. 



As yet the Celts had not attempted to attack Britain, 

 which had long since been isolated from the continent, 

 and could now only be invaded by a fleet of boats crossing 

 the silver streak of sea. Before they took that last step 

 in the conquest of Western Europe, they had learned the 

 use of bronze, from which they manufactured beautiful 

 axes, speai-s, and shields, besides producing many tools 

 for more peaceable purposes. The employment of bronze 

 enabled the Celts to make such improvements in sliip-build- 

 ing that tluy could cross the Channel to Britain, which 

 they found inhabited only by the small dark Euskarians, 

 who were now at a still greater disadvantage, seeing that 

 they were only armed with stone tomahawks, while their 

 big assailants were armed with " weapons of precision," in 

 the shape of bronze battle-axes, lances, and spears. The 

 consequence was that the Celts soon overran nearly 

 the whole island, and quickly subdued the better part 

 of it to their own dominion. In the south-eastern 

 plains, near the Continent, they apparently settled in 

 great numbers, so that when the Romans came they 

 found that part of Britain mainly inhabited by a tall, 

 fair-haired, light>skimied Aryan Celtic race. But in 

 the west, the Celts only settled in comparatively small 

 numbers, as lords of the soil, holding in suVijection a large 

 servile population of dark Euskarians ; while in South 

 Wales, and apparently in parts of the Scotch Highlands, 

 the dark people remained wholly independent, as the in- 

 habitants of those regions long afterwards did at the time 

 of the English settlement. The South Welsh tribe of 

 Euskarians were known as Silures, and they preserved 

 their nationality intact down to the period of the Roman 

 Conquest. ; 



Now, what sort of people were the pure-blooded Celts i 

 who first came to Britain 1 No doubt it may be a shock | 

 to many readers to be told so, but they were undoubtedly 1 

 a light-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and round-headed j 

 race — in fact, typical Aryans of the same sort as the 

 modem Germans, and possessed of exactly those peculiari- ' 

 ties which we ordinarily speak of as .Anglo-Saxon. About , 

 this there can be no manner of mistake. Their barrows, j 

 known both by their shape and by their bronze im- i 

 plements, contain round skulls, quite diflerent from 

 the long skulls of the Euskarians ; and the universal 

 testimony of the Roman writers, whose knowledge 

 of the Celts was obtained while tliey still lived in 

 comparative purity in Gaul and South-eastern Britain, 

 makes it quite certain that they had lis^ht hair, white skin, 

 and blue eyes. How, then, comes it that most of us think 

 of the Celtic type as essentially dark and black -haired 1 

 The reason is simply this. When the Celts conquered 

 Britain, they left largo numbers of Euskarians alive, in the 

 northern and western part of the island, at least ; and it 

 is the mixed Celtic and Euskarian descendants of these 

 people who now form the so-called Celts of the Higlilands, 

 Lancashire, North Wales, and Cornwall. Sloreover, it is 



