It may be reasonable, however, to infer that the better class of Saxon vessels were copies of the Roman or British galleys, used by Carausius or Constantius, possibly with some addition, such as higher bulwarks, fitting them the better to resist the stormy and pitching sea of the German Ocean. However slow the progress of improvement may have been among a body of merchants and shipowners, whose property was perpetually exposed to depredation and destruction, there can be no doubt that the princes of those days in Britain and throughout northern Europe availed themselves of all the resources of the time to display their maritime consequence and power to the best advantage. It can, indeed, be hardly questioned that the long and comparatively peaceful intercourse between the seamen of the north and the south must have familiarized the Vikings with such improvements in the construction of shipping as had been worked out by the nations bordering on the Mediterranean; and though, for short and hasty expeditions, the Northmen or the Saxons may have been willing to trust themselves to small or ill-constructed open boats, there is no reason to suppose this would be the case, either when they had heavy and bulky merchandise, or their best and bravest warriors, to convey in safety on long and perilous voyages. On the invasion of the Celts and of the Teutonic tribes, the inhabitants of Britain were unable to make an adequate defence. Unlike their hardy forefathers, who had needed no aid but their own good right hands, they had become accustomed to look for protection to their Roman masters, and to delegate to others what they ought to have achieved themselves. Nor were the northern tribes their only foes. Besides their new invaders, they had to contend with gangs of Roman soldiers, who, cheated of their pay by their officers, infested the highways as robbers, and extorted provisions from the natives.[463] [Sidenote: State of the Britons when abandoned by the Romans.] It might have been supposed that the Britons, improved in learning, in agriculture, in manufactures, and in the arts and sciences by four centuries of Roman instruction, would have become a great and flourishing people. They had, indeed, natural advantages superior to all their rivals, in the possession of some of the finest harbours in the world, of minerals, and of a soil as fruitful, if not more so than that of any of the countries around them. But while Rome had raised the Britons in the social scale, and imparted to them knowledge of the highest value for the development of their vast natural resources, she had, especially towards the close of her career, greatly weakened them, by the heavy drafts of their best sons for employment in local wars, or to be posted far away as garrisons in distant provinces. It is, therefore, probable that Rome left our forefathers comparatively poorer and, assuredly, in a weaker condition than they were when she usurped the government of their island.