We have already seen the meagre sum of information which Tacitus has bequeathed to us respecting the state of the north in his time. For many centuries afterwards, no great additions were made to it. In the fifth we learn that between the Elbe and the Baltic—no doubt, too, on both sides of that river, to some extent—were Angles, Jutes, and Saxons. Of these the first had no other seat. The second were doubtless a bastard colony from the more northern parts of the peninsula; and the last were an offset from the great Saxon confederation. The Jutes were the fewest in number; yet they were the progenitors of the men of Kent and the Isle of Wight, and of a tribe among the West Saxons. The rest of the Saxons—West, East, and South — were derived from the Saxon division of the colonists. The Angles gave their name to the people who bore it (the East Angles and Middle Angles) and likewise to the Mercians and Northumbrians. Such, according to that venerable authority the Saxon Chronicle, was the connection between these people and our island. But, reverting to the state of northern Europe after the time of Tacitus, yet before geography made us well acquainted with it, king Alfred, in his epitome of Orosius, adds some particulars which he had learned from his own inquiries. These particulars he derived from Otter, a Norwegian, and Wulfstan, a Danish seaman. The former said that he lived north of all the Northmen, in Halgoland, opposite to the west sea; that north of him there was an immense waste land, some parts of it, however, being visited by the Finns for hunting in summer and fishing in winter; that he had once sailed round the North Cape to the White Sea, and on the coast had found a people called Beormas, who spoke a kindred language with the Finns. “This Otter,” says the king, “was a rich man, according to the opinion of his own country: he had 600 tame deer, and six decoy ones, whose value in catching the wild deer was incalculable: hence these decoy deer were much esteemed by the Finns.” But this Norwegian captain had not above twenty head of horned cattle, and as many sheep and swine. The Finns paid rent in skin, feathers, whalebone, and ropes for shipping. (The proprietors of these lands were evidently Goths, the conquering tribe.) Otter further said, that the country of the Northmen (Norway) was long and narrow, cultivated on the sea coast, but to the east overlooked by wild barren mountains. Yet Finns inhabited them even in the ninth century,—a proof that they were tributary to these Goths, especially as we may infer from this Norwegian’s account that they were the only people that paid rent: the dominant race were freeholders. Opposite to this country of the Northmen, in the south, was _Swevland_, or Sweden; and to the north, the country opposite was _Cwenaland_, or that portion of the region between the Gulf of Bothnia and Mount Sevo. “These Cwenas,” says Otter, “frequently assailed the Northmen, and the