On the other hand, there is good reason for believing that the Britons of the south and south-eastern parts of England were by no means the barbarians some writers have asserted. It is certain that they were of the same race, and nearly connected with the Belgæ of the opposite continents, for Cæsar tells us that many names of cities in the two countries were the same; that their manners greatly resembled those of the Gauls;[409] that Divitiacus, a king of one of the Belgian tribes, was also the ruler of a wide district in England,[410] much as in later times our Edwards and Henries held large provinces of France; that Cingetorix, though ruler of the Treviri on the Moselle, was also a king in Kent;[411] and that the buildings of South Britain and Gaul bore a great similarity one to the other.[412] More than this, we know that the languages of the two countries, divided as they were from one another only by the narrowest part of the English Channel, must have been, as Tacitus[413] states, very similar—a fact partially supported by Cæsar’s mission to England of Comius, the chief of the Atrebates (Artois), that he might advocate the cause of the Romans in the British language.[414] We know further that the southern portions of England were then thickly peopled, and that the Britons were in some respects so far in advance of their neighbours that the Gauls used to send their sons to England for the purpose of learning the sacred rites of the Druids, an order of priests, be it remembered, who made use of Greek letters for both their public and private transactions.[415] It is further clear, from Cæsar’s narrative, that there must have been no inconsiderable extent of land under cultivation, and therefore cleared, at least partially, of forests, probably for the most part among the Cantii, or men of Kent, whom he calls the “most polished;”[416] moreover, if Cassivelaunus had only one-tenth of the “four thousand war chariots” mentioned by Cæsar,[417] he must have required roads, and well-made roads, too, along which to manœuvre them; not forgetting also the fact, that the construction of such chariots implies considerable mechanical skill. Cæsar adds, that the Britons made use of iron which they obtained from their maritime districts, a statement confirmed by the existence, till within a recent period, of numerous furnaces in the Weald of Sussex, for the extraction of iron from the iron sand of that district.[418] The extremely barbarous Britons, to whom the popular stories refer, were no doubt those of the more northern and central districts—Celts, who had been driven back by the advancing tide of the Belgæ of Northern France. [Sidenote: Cæsar’s reasons for invading Britain.]