OUR ANCESTORS. 



217 



plots wliicli they cleared out of the forest with their 

 stone hatchets or tomahawks. In general culture, 

 they were about at the same level as the more advanced 

 Polynesian tribes, when they first came into contact 

 with European civilisation. The barrows which they 

 raised over their dead chieftains were long and rather 

 narrow, not round, like those of the later Celtic con- 

 querors. They appear to have lived for the most 

 part in little stockaded villages, each occupying a 

 small clearing in the river valleys, and ruled over by a 

 single chief : and the barrows usually cap the summit 

 of the boundary hills which overlook the little dales. 

 Inside them are long chambered galleries of large, 

 rough-hewn stones; and when these primitive erec- 

 tions are laid bare by the decay or removal of the 

 barrow, they form the so-called "Druidical monu- 

 ments" of old-fashioned antiquaries, a few of which 

 are Celtic, but the greater part Euskariau. 



At some future period I hope to lay before the 

 readers of Knowledge a fuller account of these neo- 

 lithic people and their existing remains. At present, 

 the points to which I wish to call attention are r 

 firstly, the fact of their existence in early days in 

 Britain ; and, secondly, the fact that many of their 

 descendants still remain among us to the present day. 

 Nor do I propose in this paper to estimate the numeri- 

 cal strength of the Euskarian element in the popula- 

 tion of the British islands as it now stands. It will be 

 best to consider that part of the question at a later 

 point in this series, when we have seen what were 



