When the page of history once more opens to its annals, we find that the barbaric nations, whom we left harassing the Roman province till the Romans abandoned the island, had now effected fixed settlements within the island, and formed permanent kingdoms within its limits. South of the Firths of Forth and Clyde we find her containing a Saxon organisation and tribes of Teutonic descent hitherto known by the general name of Saxons, in full possession of her most valuable and fertile districts, and the Romans of the old British provincials confined to the mountains of Wales and Cumbria, the western districts extending from the Solway to the Clyde, and the peninsula of Cornwall. North of the Firths we find the barbaric tribes of the Picts and Scots, which had so often harassed the Roman province from the north and west, formed into settled kingdoms with definite limits; while Hibernia or Ireland now appears under the additional designation of Scotia.[102] [Sidenote: Ignorance of Britain by writers of sixth century.] So little was known of Britain during this interval of upwards of a century and a half, so undefined were the notions of the Continental writers, that Procopius, writing from Constantinople in the sixth century, describes Britain as extending from east to west, and consisting of two islands, ‘Brittia’ and ‘Brettannia,’ Brittia lay nearest Gaul, and was divided by a wall, the country to the east of which, or that nearest the Continent, he believed to be inhabited, fertile, and productive, and to be occupied by three nations,—the ‘Angiloi,’ ‘Phrissones,’ and ‘Brittones synonymous with the Isle;’ but the region to the west of the wall, by which he indicates Caledonia or the districts north of the Forth and Clyde, he only knew as a region infested by wild beasts, and with an atmosphere so tainted that human life could not exist; and he repeats a fable derived, he says, from the inhabitants, that this region was the place of departed spirits. The country south of the Humber he considered a separate island, named ‘Brettannia.’[103] Stephanus Byzantinus, writing from the same place half a century earlier, considered ‘Albion,’ ‘Brettia,’ and ‘Pretania’ separate islands, inhabited respectively by the ‘Albiones,’ ‘Brettanoi,’ and ‘Pretanoi.’[104]