It is very significant that _caves_ should be mentioned in this account; for the region of Craven is one of the very few in the country in which they are sufficiently abundant to allow of their being used as places of shelter on a scale sufficiently large to be recorded in history; and when we consider that one of the natural highways from Scotland into central England lies through that district, it seems to me extremely probable that the group of caves of which Victoria is one is that referred to. On this point it is worthy of record, that in the year 1745, when the younger Pretender was at Shap, and it was doubtful whether he would take the route through Ribblesdale or by way of Preston, the eldest son of one of the landowners near Settle, was hidden, along with the family plate, in a Cave close to the Victoria, in the belief that the Highlanders were in the habit of eating children as well as of laying hands on the precious metals. The historical notice tallies exactly with the geographical position, and is not inconsistent with the evidence offered by the coins and other remains. The date, therefore, of the occupation may probably be assigned as about the middle of the fifth century. This, however, is not the latest date that can be assigned. In the year 449, the three ships which contained Hengist and his warriors, landed at Ebbsfleet, in Thanet, and the first English colony was founded among a people who were known to the strangers as “Brit-Welsh.”[65] From that time a steady immigration of Angle, Jute, Saxon, and Frisian set in towards the eastern coast of Britain, as far north as the Firth of Forth, until, in the first half of the sixth century, the whole of the eastern part of our island was taken possession of by various tribes,[66] whose names, for the most part, still survive in the names of our counties. The principal rivers also afforded them a free passage into the heart of the country, and the kingdom of Mercia gradually expanded until it embraced, not only the basin of the Trent, but reached as far as the line of the Severn. The river Humber afforded a base of operations for the Anglian freebooters, who founded the kingdom of Deira or modern Yorkshire; while the camp of Bamborough was the centre from which Ida, who landed with fifty ships in the year 547, conquered Bernicia, or the region extending from the river Tees to Edinburgh. The tide of English colonization rolled steadily westward, until, at the close of the sixth century, the hilly and impassable districts culminating in the Pennine Chain, and extending southwards from Cumberland and Westmoreland, through Yorkshire and Derbyshire, formed the barrier between the Brit-Welsh kingdoms of Elmet and Strathclyde on the east, and the English on the west. To the south of this the Brit-Welsh dominion was bounded by the river Severn, and included Chester and the whole of the basin of the Dee; while Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall, and the district round Bradford and Malmesbury