OUR ANCESTORS. 22$ 



blood may perhaps have been indirectly introduced 

 by the legionaries, though comparatively few even of 

 these were really Roman. Most of them were Gauls, 

 Spaniards, Germans, and Low Dutch peoples ; and 

 their influence could only have been felt, ethnographi- 

 cally speaking, in the immediate neighbourhood of 

 the military stations, where a few half-breeds may 

 have mingled scantily here and there with the native 

 population. A more important result of the conquest, 

 however, would doubtless be found in the general 

 amalgamation of the older Celtic and Euskarian ele- 

 ments under stress of the new overlords. There is 

 reason to believe that the greater number of Britons 

 sank into the position of serfs, either employed on the 

 great corn farms into which the land was parcelled 

 out, or in the mines of Cornwall, Sussex, and the 

 Forest of Dean. This grinding and levelling system 

 of slavery must have pressed pretty equally upon 

 Celts and Euskarians, light-haired Belgae and dark 

 Silurians, the former conquerors and the former 

 slaves. Confused together in such a common serf- 

 dom, the two types seem to have coalesced, so that 

 the lighter and numerically weaker Aryan Celts 

 became practically almost merged into the darker and 

 more numerous Euskarians. At least we know that 

 ever since the Roman days, and down to modern 

 times, the so-called Celts of Wales, Cornwall, and the 

 Highlands are, for the most part, dark -haired and 

 dark-skinned people of a more or less distinctly 

 Euskarian physique, intermixed with comparatively 



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