The ancient trackway along the Chilterns, known as the Ickneld Way, reached the Thames near Wallingford. Travellers going south and east from this point struck across the narrow space of low broken ground between the two chalk ranges by a short linking road. Silchester, the capital of an important Brito-Belgic tribe, lies on or near the course of such a road in a corn-bearing region. Silchester was the key of the old road system over the Thames fords. It is known to have been one of three most important pre-Roman British centres, and we may, I think, look on it as the first British city. The British city of Verulamium lay to the south of the Ickneld Way, in the same great triangle between the two chalk regions which is here much wider. The rise of this centre suggests that a road linking the two chalk ranges had been found across the river valley much lower than Silchester. The later Roman Watling Street, directed straight on Verulam, formed such a link, and there are many reasons which suggests that some underlying British trackway must have been the cause why Verulam became important. Later, again, Colchester came to be the chief city. Possibly it was favoured as being more remote when the Romans should make an attack. It seems to have been named after the Celtic war-god, and this may be significant. (In Roman days as in mediæval, there was probably a ferry from Gravesend to Tilbury for direct access to Colchester from Kent. This seems to be suggested by the Peutinger roadmap.) _Origin of London._—By origin I mean the beginning of a development which led to the establishment of a port and commercial town. Doubtless the site may have been occupied by some dwellers in the Stone Age. For many centuries before the Roman conquest Britain had been in commercial relations with the Continent. Just before the conquest Verulam was the capital of the leading Celtic kingdom. This Brito-Belgic kingdom had its southern boundary along the Thames and its eastern at the Lea, and these are still boundaries of Middlesex. If this kingdom, with its capital some twenty miles inland, had any sea-borne trade, its port must have been on or near the site of London. It is even probable that this port was the cause of the pre-eminence of the little kingdom to which it belonged. The port was to Verulam what the Piræus was to Athens, Ostia to Rome, Dover to Canterbury, and Southampton to Winchester. London was doubtless the source of the wealth of King Cymbeline, and we might very well look on him as the founder.