96 THE DOVER ROAD 



likely to be determined to the satisfaction of all 

 antiquaries, and its age is equally a contested point. 

 But that a street or a trackway of some kind, of an 

 identical route with the present highway, ran between 

 London and Dover long before Caesar landed can 

 scarce be matter for doubt. That the Britons were 

 barbaric and unused to commerce or intercourse with 

 the Continent can scarcely be supposed, for Britain 

 was the Sacred Island of the Druidical religion, and 

 to it came the youth of Gaul for instruction at the 

 hands of those high priests Avhose Holy of Holies 

 lay, across the land, in remote Anglesey. Those 

 priests were the instructors, both in religion and 

 secular knowledge, of the Gaulish youth ; and, outside 

 the civilisations of Greece and Rome, Britain was even 

 then the best place to acquire a " liberal education." 

 Up the rugged trackway of the Sarn Gwyddelin = the 

 Foreigners' Road, from Dover to London, and 

 diagonally across the island, came these youths ; and 

 down it, to voyage across the Channel, and to take part 

 with their Gaulish friends in any fighting that might be 

 going, went those tall British warriors whose strength 

 and fierceness surprised Ciesar in his Gallic War. 



Imports and exports, too, passed along this rough 

 way ; skins and gold, British hunting-dogs and slaves 

 were shipped to Gaul and Rome by merchants who, 

 to keep the trade unspoiled, magnified the dangers 

 of the sea-crossing and the fierceness of the people. 

 Pottery, glass-beads, and cutlery they imported in 

 return ; and this primitive " road " must have pre- 

 sented a busy scene long before it could ha\x deserved 

 the actual name. 



When Cicsar, eager for spoil and conquest, marched 

 across country from Deal, and first saw the Sarn 

 Gwyddelin from the summit of Barham Downs, it 

 could have been but a track, never built, but gradually 

 brought into existence by the tramping of students 

 and fighting-men, and widened by the commerce of 

 those exclusive merchants. Thus it remained for 



