148 



MARTIN L. ROUSE, ESQ.^ B.L., ON 



there was only one route left for the remaining Ijranch of 

 Gomer's race, namely, northward into west central Eussia. 

 Thither, then, they went ; and, finding Germany but little 

 occupied, they spread over that country. But the vast bulk of 

 its surface was then covered with forest ; so, to avoid the labour 

 of clearing their ground of trees, the early settlers beyond doubt 

 first tilled the soil and built homesteads along the green glades by 

 river and sea. And thus their advanced guard, moving along 

 the southern shore of the Baltic Sea and thence from island to 

 island at its western end, presently found themselves in Sweden. 

 Accordingly we find the most fertile southern part of that 

 country known from time immemorial as Scania, and the islands 

 of Denmark, together with this province, known to later Latin 

 writers as the Islands of Scandia (an epenthetic d having crept 

 in, such as helped to change ISTormannia into N'ormandie or 

 Normandy).* 



Crossing thence to Germany, whose people have the same 

 " Teutonic " basis to their language as the Swedes, we find the 

 inhabitants of the ancient State of Dessau to have long claimed 

 descent from Ashkenaz of the Bible ; and, in keeping with this 

 claim, a ruler of theirs in the twelfth century, who held for a 

 while the Saxon estates of Henry the Lion, the founder of our 

 House of Brunswick, added to his baptismal name of Bernard 

 that of Ascanius, declaring that his ancestors came from Lake 

 Ascanius in Bithynia. But the claim is supported by stronger 

 testimony from outside ; for the Jews of Eussia, Germany, and 

 other countries have, from time immemorial, known the Germans 

 as Ashkenazim. 



It was thus a wave of Ashkenaz's race from Asia Minor 

 that first drove a wedge of Teutonic life and institutions into 

 what we now know as Germany, but which was then (as I 

 have before shown) thinly peopled with Kelts, or Kumri ; 

 and it was the same wave that first colonized southern 

 Scandinavia, where in the time of tlie historian Tacitus (a.d. 

 100), we find a settled people called the Suii, or Swedes. 



But far away, on the nortliern borders of Media, a rearguard 

 of the same great family remained behind. We have already 

 fixed the position of this people, who formed the l>il)hcal 

 kingdom of Ashkenaz, and who as allies of tlieir neiglibours, 

 the Modes, caused so nmch trouble to King Esarhaddon of 



And such as transformed tener (Lat.) into tendre (Fr.) and tender 

 (Eng.), and Allemaimus, Allemanna (L.) into Allemand, Alleonande (F.) 



