Even Gildas, himself of British descent, and writing from the neighbouring shore of Armorica, takes his description of the size of Britain from the cosmogony of Ethicus, written two centuries earlier, merely qualifying it by the addition, ‘except where the headlands of sundry promontories stretch farther into the sea,’[105] apparently referring to Caledonia, but he evidently considered the country north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde as a separate island from the rest of Britain. He applies the same epithet of ‘transmarine’ to its inhabitants and to the Scots from Ireland. He calls the regions between the walls the extreme part of the island, and he writes of its transactions as if he had no personal knowledge of them, but had received them by report from a distant land; for he says he will relate his history,[106] ‘so far as he is able, not so much from the writings and written memorials of his native country, which either are not to be found, or if ever there were any of them have been consumed in the fires of the enemy, or been carried off by his exiled countrymen, as from foreign report, which, from the interruption of intercourse, is by no means clear.’[107] [Sidenote: Position of Britain at this time as viewed from Rome.] In order to realise thoroughly the cause of this darkness and confusion which appear to have settled upon Britain and its affairs after the departure of the Romans, we must consider its real position towards Rome as viewed from thence. During the period of the Roman dominion it resembled a distant colony exposed to the incursions of frontier tribes whom no treaties could bind and no defeats subjugate, requiring a large military force for its protection, the accounts of whose proceedings reached Rome at distant intervals, and only attracted more than a passing attention when a crisis occurred in her affairs, which must have been considered rather as a vexatious interruption in matters of nearer and more engrossing interest than a subject of general attention. When the Roman government was withdrawn, she resembled such a distant colony with all connection severed between her and the home government, abandoned to the incursions of her enemies, and left to protect and rule herself.