Abundance of remains of primeval inhabitants--No trace of Briton or Saxon on Dartmoor--None of Palæolithic man--The Neolithic man who occupied it--Account of his migrations--His presence in Ireland, in China, in Algeria--A pastoral people--The pottery--The arrival of the Celt in Britain in two waves--The Gael--The Briton--Introduction of iron--Mode of life of the original occupants of the moor--The huts--Pounds--Cooking--Tracklines--Enormous numbers who lived on Dartmoor--A peaceable people. Probably no other tract of land of the same extent in England contains such numerous and well-preserved remains of prehistoric antiquity as Dartmoor. The curious feature about them is that they all belong to one period, that of the Early Bronze, when flint was used abundantly, but metal was known, and bronze was costly and valued as gold is now. Not a trace has been found so far of the peoples who intervened between these primitive occupants and the mediæval tin-miners. If iron was introduced a couple of centuries before the Christian era, how is it that the British inhabitants who used iron and had it in abundance have left no mark of their occupancy of Dartmoor? It can be accounted for only on the supposition that they did not value it. The woods had been thinned and they preferred the lowlands, whereas in the earlier period the dense forests that clothed the country were too close a jungle and too much infested by wolves to be suitable for the habitation of a pastoral people. That under the Roman domination the tin was worked on the moor there is no evidence to show. No Roman coins have been found there except a couple brought by French prisoners to Princetown. It may be said that iron would corrode and disappear, whereas flint is imperishable, and bronze nearly so. But where is Roman pottery? Where is even the pottery of the Celtic period? An era is distinguished by its fictile ware. A huge gap in historic continuity is apparent. All the earthenware found on Dartmoor is either prehistoric or mediæval, probably even so late as the reign of Elizabeth. No indication is found that the Saxons worked the tin or even drove their cattle on to the moor. In Domesday Book Dartmoor is not even mentioned. It is hard to escape the conclusion that from the close of the prehistoric period to that of our Plantagenet kings, Dartmoor was avoided as a waste, inhospitable region. Of man in the earliest period at which he is known to have existed--the so-called Palæolithic man--not a trace has been found on Dartmoor. Probably when he lived in Britain the whole upland was clothed in snow. He has left his tools in the Brixham and Torquay caves--none in the bogs of the moor. Indeed, when these bogs have been dug into, there are not the smallest indications found of man having visited the moor before the advent of what is called the Neolithic Age.