AN ENGLISH SHIRE, 1S7 



savages of the drift — before the last Glacial epoch, it is 

 impossible to say, because we know that many of them 

 did not then exist, and that the present configuration of 

 the county is largely due to subsequent agencies. Britain 

 was then united to the continent by a broad belt of land, 

 filling up the bed of the English Channel, and it possessed 

 a climate wholly different from that of the present day ; 

 while the position of the drift and the river gravels 

 shows that the sculpture of the surface was then in many 

 respects unlike the existing distribution of hill and 

 valley. We must confine ourselves, therefore, to the later 

 or recent period (subsequent to the last glaciation of 

 Britain), during which man has employed implements of 

 polished stone, of bronze, and of iron. 



The Euskarian neolithic population of Britain — a dark 

 white race, like the modern Basques — had settlements in 

 Sussex, at least in the coast district between the Downs 

 and the sea. Here they could obtain in abundance the 

 flints for the manufacture of their polished stone hatchets ; 

 while on the alluvial lowlands of Selsea and Shoreham 

 they could grow those cereals upon which they largely 

 depended for their daily bread. Neolithic monuments, 

 indeed, are common along the range of the South Downs, 

 as they are also on the main mass of the chalk in Salis- 

 bury Plain ; and at Cissbury Hill, near Worthing, we 

 have remains of one of the largest neolithic camp refuges 

 in Britain. The evidence of tumuli and weapons goes to 

 show that the Euskarian people of Sussex occupied the 

 coast belt and the combes of the Downs from the 

 Chichester marshland to Pevensey, but that they did 

 not spread at all into the Weald. In fact, it is most 



