330 A TOPOGRAPHICAL ARGUMENT IN FAVOUR OF THE 



to the streams and rivers of England, who gave • names to the 

 streams, and rivers, and lochs, and mountains, and headlands, and 

 valleys of Scotland, must have been the same people who gave names 

 to the streams and rivers, to the lochs and mountains and hillocks, 

 to the headlands and valleys of Ireland. So far as a topographical 

 argument can be admitted to be of much avail or consequence — and 

 it is difficult to understand why, in the determining of questions 

 that affect the settlement of countries in the far-off past, great 

 value ought not to be attached to topographical names it must be 

 conceded that, without considering the presence of a previous race in 

 the British Isles, there is sufficient evidence that the Gaels pre- 

 ceded the Cymry, and that in England, Scotland and Ireland the 

 Gaels have left indelible traces of their presence at a remote time. 

 There is certainly very imich to justify the conjecture of Nicholas, 

 who, in his " Pedigree of the English People" (p. 46), thus writes : 

 " In the absence of historic record, we are justified in presuming 

 on grounds of antecedent probability that Ireland would receive its 

 first inhabitants from Wales or Scotland. Wonderful explorers 

 were those ancient Celts. Probably they soon pushed their way 

 through thicket and swamp to the Highlands of Scotland, and find- 

 ing there an end to their territory, they there, from the highest 

 eminences, looked out westward and descried the misty coast of the 

 Green Isle. The first tribes to arrive in Britain would probably be 

 the first settlers in Scotland and Ireland. Pressed toward the 

 interior by subsequent arrivals, nomadic hordes but slightly attached 

 to any particular spot, they would readily move forward to new 

 pasturages rather than long contend for the old. The Gaelic or 

 Gadhelic people, therefore, may be presumed to have had the advan- 

 tage of priority of occupation." Aristotle, the first writer who 

 refers to Britain, says : " Beyond the pillars of Hercules, the ocean 

 flows round the earth, and in it are two very large islands called 

 British {pptxravwu Xsyo;dvai) Albin and Ierne lying beyond the 

 Keltoi." By the term Albin Ai-istotle must have intended that 

 portion of the British Isles now embraced by England and Scotland. 

 The Scottish Gaels still speak of their country as Albin, and of 

 themselves as Albannaich, thereby showing that, if there is any 

 force in the reference of Aristotle, they are the representatives of 

 the earliest inhabitants of Albin, or of England and Scotland. 



