I must here interrupt the thread of this narration by observing, that the only way to account for the present use of a different language in the centre and most craggy parts of the Grey League, is by allowing that the Tuscans, who, from the delicacy of their constitutions and habits, were little able, and less inclined, to encounter the hardships of so severe a climate and so barren a soil, never attempted to mix with the original and more sturdy inhabitants of that unfavoured spot; but left them and their language, which could only be a Celtic idiom, in the primitive state in which they found them.[N] But to proceed;--several Roman families, dreading the fury of the Carthaginians under Hannibal, and perhaps, since during the rage of the civil wars, and the subsequent oppressive reigns, interior commotions and foreign invasions, forsook the Latium and Campania, and resorted for a peaceful enjoyment of their liberty, some into the islands where Venice now stands, and many into the mountains of the Grisons, where they chiefly fixed their residence in the Engadine,[O] as appears not only from the testimonies of authors,[P] but also from the names of several places and families which are evidently of Roman derivation.[Q] The inhabitants these emigrants found in that place of refuge could not but be a mixture of the Tuscans and original Lepontii; and the two languages which met upon this occasion must, at the very first, have had some affinity; as the Tuscan, which derived immediately from the Greek, is known to have had a great share in the formation of the Roman. But as it is generally observed, that the more polished people introduce their native tongue wherever they go to reside in any considerable numbers, the arrival of these successive colonies must gradually have produced a considerable change in the language of the country in which they settled;[R] and this change gave rise to the dialect since called Ladin, probably from the name of the mother country of its principal authors.[S]