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therefore be tolerably certain that the Basques held France 
and Spain before the invasion of the Celts, and that the 
non- Aryan peoples were cut asunder, and certain parts of 
them left — Ligurians, Sikani, and in part Sardinians and 
Corsicans — as ethnological islands, marking, so to speak 
an ancient Basque non- Aryan continent which had been 
submerged by the Celtic populations advancing steadily 
westwards. 
At the time of the Roman conquest of Gaul, the Belgse 
were pressing on the Celts just as the latter pressed the 
Basques, the Seine and the Marne forming their southern 
boundary, and in their turn being pushed to the east by the 
advance of the Germans in the Rhine provinces. Thus we 
have the oldest population, or Basque, invaded by the Celts, 
the Celts by the Belgae, and these again by the Germans ; 
their relative positions stamping their relative antiquity in 
Europe. 
The Population of Britain. 
The Celtic and Belgic invasion of Gaul repeated itself, as 
might be expected, in Britain. Just as the Celts pushed 
back the Iberian population of Gaul as far south as Aqui- 
tania, and swept round it into Spain, so they crossed over 
the Channel and overran the greater portion of Britain, 
until the Silures, identified by Tacitus with the Iberians, 
were left only in those fastnesses that formed subsequently 
a bulwark for the Brit- Welsh against the English invaders. 
And just as the Belgse pressed on the rear of the Celts as 
far as the Seine, so they followed them into Britain, and 
took possession of the “Pars Maritima,” or southern coun- 
ties. The unsettled condition of the country at the time of 
Caesar’s invasion was, probably, due to the struggle then 
going on between the Celts and Belgae. 
