Ch. vi. Inhabitants of the North of Europe. Ill 



of hunting, employed in pasturage the most con- 

 siderable part of their lands, bestowed on the 

 small remainder a rude and careless cultivation, 

 and when the return of famine severely admo- 

 nished them of the insufficiency of their scanty re- 

 sources, they accused the sterility of a country 

 which refused to supply the multitude of its in- 

 habitants;* but instead of clearing their forests, 

 draining their swamps, and rendering their soil 

 fit to support an extended population, they found 

 it more congenial to their martial habits and im- 

 patient dispositions, " to go in quest of food, of 

 plunder, or of glory,"| into other countries. 

 These adventurers either gained lands for them- 

 selves by their swords or were cut off by the 

 various accidents of war; were received into the 

 Roman armies or dispersed over the Roman ter- 

 ritory; or, perhaps, having relieved their country 

 by their absence, returned home laden with spoils, 

 and ready, after having recruited their diminished 

 numbers, for fresh expeditions. The succession of 

 human beings appears to have been most rapid ; and 

 as fast as some were disposed of in colonies, or 

 mowed do wn by the scythe of war and famine, others 

 rose in increased numbers to supply their place* 



According to this view of the subject, the 

 North could never have been exhausted; and 

 when Dr. Robertson, describing the calamities of 

 these invasions, says, that they did not cease till 

 the North, by pouring forth successive swarms, 



* Gibbon, vol. i. c. \\. p. 360. t Id. vol. i. c. x. p. 417. 



