314 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



man of superior importance, a wanderer, a travelling 

 merchant. Vend, in Gaelic, a head or chief; the fusion 

 of the Finnic Yeta with the Celtic race being percep- 

 tible in various recorded names and events. Thus, in 

 A.D. 563, the Winetans elected for their king Samo, a 

 pagan Sennonian Gallic merchant, who continued his 

 reign during thirty-five years. A Finnic Celt, of great 

 ability, has, during the present generation, again found 

 an elective throne in the high north. The Boii, a 

 tribe of Celto-Scythae, wandered from Gaul to Bo- 

 hemia, perhaps a pristine home; others resided, ac- 

 cording to Lelewel, in Gallicia, all before the Chris- 

 tian era ; and therefore Gaul was not unknown to the 

 Vandals when they removed to the south. We trace 

 the Celtic nationality still farther, in the name of 

 Wallinische Werder, the locality where Jomsberg, one 

 of the sister cities, was built; even at Dantzig, the 

 same influence was perceived, in the appellation of the 

 river Rodaun. Historically, it is found in the bond 

 of long enduring neutrality which the Winetans, 

 then called Vandals, maintained among themselves, 

 the Goths, Suevi, and Burgundians, during their offen- 

 sive wars against the Roman empire ; and their power, 

 in the facility which Stilicho, a native Vandal, found 

 towards the attainment of the first honours of the 

 empire, as well as for raising up enemies against it in 

 his own cause. Political considerations may have pre- 

 vented the Vandal inroad from proceeding beyond 

 Pannonia towards Italy. The Illyrian Veneti pro- 

 bably bought off the invaders, and pointed out the 



