Valley of the Clyde.” With Galloway, it continued under its own rulers, until, in the tenth century, it was connected with the Kingdom of Scone by the election to its throne—if it could afford a throne—of Donald, brother of Constantine II., King of Scots. The Picts whom Columba converted appear to have been then consolidated under one monarch, Brude; his rule was from Inverness to Iona on the west; on the north to the Orkneys—probably including Aberdeen; its southern boundary is undefined. Of succeeding kings to Brude, there is a list of names; but little is known of the men themselves until, in 731, we come to Angus Mac-Fergus. In reprisal for the capture of his son by Selvach, King of the Dalriad Scots, he attacked Argyle, and reduced the whole western highlands. The Strathclyde Britons were assailed by a brother of Angus, in 756, and their chief town, Alclyde, destroyed. In the beginning of the ninth century, the seat of the Pictish government appears to have migrated from Inverness into Perthshire,—Scone becoming its political capital. The history of the Dalriadan Scots, although interwoven with that of the Picts, and meeting at many points with the histories of the Britons of Strathclyde, and the Angles of Northumbria, is yet misty and legendary. True, there is a list of kings, and their stalwart portraits hang in the great hall of Holyrood; so extensive is this list, that if they had reigned for anything like an average period, it would carry the history back to about three hundred years B.C. We find something like a trustworthy beginning in Fergus, the son of Earac, in 503. From this date for upwards of two hundred years, down to Selvach, who was conquered by the Pictish King Angus Mac-Fergus, there is from the _Irish Annals_, and the _Church History_ of Beda, a reasonable certainty. After this there is another century of hazy legend. If, as seems probable, Dalriada continued through the latter seventy years of the eighth, and the first half of the ninth century, under Pictish rule, it is not easy to see how, in the middle of the ninth century, Kenneth Mac-Alpine, called in the _Irish Annals_ a king of the Picts, founded, as there is no doubt he did, a line of Scottish monarchs on the throne of Scone. One hypothesis is, that Kenneth was the son of a Pictish king by a Scottish mother, and by the Pictish law, the mother’s nationality determined that of the children. Whatever the circumstances of the case, the accession of Kenneth Mac-Alpine represents an era in Scottish history. There was thenceforth such a complete union of Scots and Picts, that as separate races they lost all distinctiveness. But it certainly appears that, both by numerical superiority and historical prestige, the country should have been Pictland, rather than Scotland.