36 Dr Daniel Wilson on the Intrusion of 



tory convey to us a more vivid impression of the complete 

 isolation of the diverse tribes then scattered over the European 

 continent. The Pyrenees and the great Alpine chain, spread- 

 ing eastward to the head waters of the Danube, formed, in 

 the age of the Father of history, a barrier of exclusion for all 

 the Transalpine races, scarcely less effectual than that which, 

 for upwards of eighteen centuries thereafter, concealed this 

 great antiquity, America, from the eyes of Europe. Kelts, 

 Kymric or Gaelic, had doubtless crossed the Alps long prior 

 to the first notice of them by Herodotus, and had established 

 themselves in the fertile valley of the Po, as well as extended 

 their influence far southward into the Italian peninsula. 

 Whether, at that period, they had ever been present on any 

 portion of the Hellenic area of Greece, may well be ques- 

 tioned, notwithstanding the undoubted Keltic elements recog- 

 nised in the Greek language. They had, however, already 

 passed to the south of the Pyrenees, and intermingling with 

 the older Iberians of Spain, constituted the ancient Keltibe- 

 rian population of Arragon and Valencia : unless, indeed, we 

 are prepared to recognise in the Keltse and Galatse of Aristotle 

 and Diodorus something more than varied forms of the same 

 name ; though even then, the distinction will not necessarily 

 imply a greater one than the philologist recognises between 

 the Keltic elements of the ancient Greek and Latin, or the 

 ethnologist perceives to separate the modern Gael and Kymri 

 of Great Britain. 



To the Greeks of the age of Herodotus the Kelts were only 

 known, by the chance report of some Phoenician seamen, as 

 one among the rude tribes of the barbarian West, where the 

 coasts of Europe intruded furthest into the mysterious Atlan- 

 tic main, which was to them the aqueous boundary of the 

 world. The Greeks of that age little suspected that these 

 same western Kelts reached from the shores of the Atlantic 



was understood by the Romans in the time of Caesar. But it is not at all im- 

 probable that the population of Gallicia and the Biscayan provinces of Spain 

 might have been puroly Gallic B.C. 400, and yet that the displaced Iberi of the 

 south might have even crossed the Garonne in Caesar's time. Immense dis- 

 placement had taken place during the interval in the Spanish peninsula. But 

 the name Garonne, like the Scottish Garry, is essentially Celtic and descriptive: 

 the rough river. 



