But _Ucker_-mark was a Border, or Debatable land in the eyes of the Slavonians, as well as their conquerors; and the name of its original occupants signified _Borderers_. The _kr_-is the _kr_-in U-_krain_-, as well as in the word _Grenz_, which, though German at present, is in origin, Slavonic. The form _Uckri_, _Ucrani_, and _Uncrani_, indicate this. Perhaps, though only _perhaps_, this Ukrian March--this Brandenburg Ukraine--may have separated the most western Lithuanians of Prussia from the Slavonians of the water-system of the Oder; if so, the word is an instrument of criticism, as it certainly is in many other interesting instances. In part of the circle of Kotbus, the Sorabian of Silesia is still spoken. The south-western districts of Prussia east of the Saale, Hesse, an outlying portion of Hanover, and Weimar, along with a narrow strip on the Brunswick frontier, are the only parts of the western half of the Proper Brandenburg Prussia that began with being Germanic; and even here there seems to have been intermixture. The Hanoverian frontier seems to have been wholly Slavonic. Of Rhenish Prussia, Westphalia was originally Saxon--not exactly Angle or Anglo-Saxon, but slightly differing from the Anglo-Saxon in language. It was _Old_-Saxon. The Old-Saxon language, however, is extinct, and the blood considerably mixed. Encroachment and conquest of Low Dutch and High Dutch Germans from the South, in the ninth and tenth centuries, effected this. There were, also, a few Slavic colonies. Otherwise the blood is German; though neither wholly Dutch nor wholly Saxon. The old tribes of Westphalian Prussia were the Chamavi, Bructeri, and Angrivarii. In Berg, Cleves, and the parts about Cologne, the Ubii, Tenchteri, Sicambri, and other allied tribes, were, probably, Dutch rather than Saxon, and Low Dutch rather than High. On the French frontier there is a Keltic basis; Cologne claims a notable amount of Roman blood. _Mecklenburg._--The great Slavonic nation of Mecklenburg was the Obotrites; after them the Wilzi, the Tollenzi, and the Rethrarii of the old pagan town of _Rethre_. The dukes of Mecklenburg alone, of all the numerous dynasts of Germany, are of Slavonic extraction. _Saxony._--Either conquered from Westphalian Saxony, or settled by Saxon colonies, the kingdom to which Dresden is the metropolis, originally the country of the Semnones, is German only in language. In blood it belongs to the same division with Silesia; indeed the _Sorabian_ frontier (for so the _Srbie_, and _Serskie_ may conveniently be called) extended as far westwards as the Saale. _Hanover._--From Hanover, the north-east quarter (there or thereabouts) must be deducted as Slavonic. Luneburg took its name from the Slavonic Linones, whose language was spoken in a few villages as late as the last century.