By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



101 



affirm decisively, that when those first adventurers landed, they 

 may not have found other tribes already established, the veritable 

 aborigines of Britain; perhaps styling themselves " indigenous " 

 like their Latin, or priding themselves on being " Autochthones " 

 (sprung from the soil) like their Greek contemporaries : 1 but in 



the arrival of the Celts, and to have been descended from the ancient Phrygians, 

 who were some of the first inhabitants of Europe. It is certain that they oc- 

 cupied Britain in very early times, and that they esteemed themselves the 

 aborigines or first inhabitants of it. [Henry's History of England, vol. i., 

 p. 276.] 



" Per haps tens of centuries before the Roman legions crossed the Channel, 

 while the Egyptians were accumulating those imperishable stone barrows, the 

 Pyramids ; when Abraham lived, and the cities of the plain stood ; there existed 

 in Britain a population, possibly Pre-Celtic, at all events having habits corres- 

 ponding with those which were universally disseminated by the primitive races 

 in their radiations from the trans- Himalayan cradle of the species." [Ten years 

 digging in Celtic and Saxon grave-hills in the Counties of Derby, Stafford and 

 York, from 1848 to 1858, by Thomas Bateman. London 1861, page 2., intro- 

 duction.] 



" It is possible that a primeval people represented at present by the Basques 

 and the Fins wandered in pastoral tribes over all Europe, while Kelt and Ger- 

 man were still east of the Yolga." [Professor Pearson's Early and Middle 

 Ages of England, p. 1.] 



1 Prichard says that among the Ancient Greeks and Romans it seems to have 

 been the universal opinion that every country had its "Autochthones" or in- 

 digenous stock of inhabitants ; an hypothesis very easy to adopt, which would 

 afford a ready solution to many difficulties, and remove at once from Ethnolo- 

 gists a vast amount of perplexity and doubt. [Researches into the Physical 

 History of Mankind, vol. i., 2, ii., 38.] 



Rollins' Ancient History, vol. ii., p. 160. 



Keithley's Greece, chap, ii., p. 8. 



It was the favorite boast of Athens that her inhabitants were sprung from the 

 soil: hence the adoption of the symbol of the grasshopper. [Thucyd : i., 6, ii., 36, 

 vi., 2. Herod: vii., 161. Aristoph: Eq : 1221, Nub: 955.] Thus too Egypt 

 [Herodotus ii., 2, 142. Plato Titnoeus 22 B.] thinking it glorious to lose itself 

 in an abyss of infinite ages, which seemed to carry its pretensions backward to 

 eternity, claimed to reckon back its ancestors through 20,000 years. [Rollins' 

 Anc : Hist: i., 47, 64 ] But the Egyptian numbers were moderate compared 

 with those of some other nations ; the Babylonians counted 468,000 years from 

 the first king Alorus to the Conquest by Cyrus. [Beros : ap : Euseb : Chron : i., 

 pp. 5 — 18.] And the Indians trace back their history for a still longer period. 

 [Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. ii., p. 2, 223, also Appendix to Book ii., 

 p. 279, 282.] While in modern days China puts forth similar pretensions. 

 These figures however, which chronologers have hitherto ridiculed, are be- 

 ginning to be regarded with seriousness since the recent discoveries and calcula- 

 tions of some of our modern geologists. [See Sir C. Ly ell's Antiquity of Man.] 



