308 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



Alps, the centre of its national strength, where the present 

 F.edmont was in its possession. On the side of Italy, the cap- 

 ital, Ticinum, now Paviy , was in the district of the Lcevian 

 tribe, with the Libuans, on the banks of Lake Garda, and the 

 nation extended to the vicinity of the present Avignon, where 

 Strabo places the Celto-Ligurians. They long were bold sea- 

 men, and a brave and industrious people, defending their lib- 

 erties against Roman encroachment during forty years, before 

 their last tribe was subdued. They had been early disturbed, 

 both in the Alps, and on the coast, by Gallic invaders, who 

 absorbed or forced settlements among them. It was from the 

 Ligurian tribe of Legobriges, about the year B. C. 600, when 

 the Phoenician and Rhodian trade had declined, that the Plio- 

 cian Euxinos obtained the cession of the port of Marseilles, 

 by means of Petta, daughter of the chief Nannus. The trans- 

 action is related with particulars, both by Aristotle and Justin ; 

 but the fact itself indicates the consanguinity of these tribes 

 with the Grecian Locri, who were neighbors of the Pho- 

 cians. 



By the eminently marine habits of this people, and their 

 migrating disposition, they were, it seems, scattered in various 

 regions; and nowhere, except at the head of the Adriatic and 

 in the Alps, had national consistency. They were of common 

 origin with the Istrian, Liburnian, and other tribes, who appear 

 likewise to have claimed a Colchian descent. Their ships, 

 from the humblest raft, and the coracle of three and a half ox- 

 hides, sewed and stretched over a frame-work of willow, 

 changing successivelyto lintres, logs, longs, Liburnic-biremes, 

 caracks, caravellas, and finally to ragusas or argosies, were in 

 general the models of those adopted by other nations, and 

 Reul was their most ancient guiding star at sea. But, with 

 the exception of the Liburnians, they were no longer mariners 

 than the swarming period of their departure from Asia ; for 

 in subsequent accounts we find them move by land ; and if 

 they were the same nation as the Llogrwys, or Llogrians, of 



