But as a matter of fact they were more likely to wish to go westward than northward, because it was in the west of England that those things of value lay for which, in the old days, people did come from the Continent to England--that is the lead and tin that were in the mines. These lay in the west of England and in Ireland. In Ireland, in the Wicklow mountains, some gold was found. So, then, going westward, these people came to the meeting of the roads at or about Avebury and the Salisbury Plain country. On those high downs and on that thin soil there would be few and small trees. The woodland would be all below, say rising not much more than 500 feet above sea-level. Therefore this high country gave the best and easiest land for the living of a people who were in the pastoral stage; that is, had flocks and herds. It was, and it still is, good sheep land. And it did not need clearing. The Anglo-Saxons came with somewhat different habits. They had been used to living in the woodlands and the river valleys, rather than on open downs; and therefore it was to the lower lands that they naturally resorted. They established themselves in villages there, as they had been established in their homes across the Channel. I would remind you again that I am trying to tell you the story of how these people came and settled in England, and how the kind of life that they lived has developed into the kind of life that we lead now, not only because it is our very own English story, and therefore of the closest interest to us, but also because it is in much the same way that the Gothic tribes settled and developed over most of the Frankish Empire and also where the Visigoths lived, in Spain, both while they were the actual rulers of Spain and {100} also in the times of the Moorish conquest of that country. So that it is the story of a great part of the world, and of the part most important for the world's progress, that we may see being enacted on a small scale in our own island. [Sidenote: Saxon houses]