That these were indications of any racial significance the non-seagoing Briton had seldom, perhaps, realized. That, because of them, his language had become a familiar tongue in the uttermost parts of the {xi} earth; that because of them every would-be world-tyrant, since Philip of Spain, had been frustrated; that because of them the freedom of nations, no less than that of individuals, had slowly become humanity's gospel--this had been as little present to him as to the inhabitant of Turnham Green that he was living in the greatest harbour of the world; and yet that it was so was but a matter of fact, and indeed the natural outcome of our origin. Since Britain had become an island every wave of invaders had necessarily come to it in ships and with experience of the sea. However various may have been their other contributions to the ultimate nation into which they were to be merged, this had been common to them, they had all been seamen, of whatever temperament or complexion; and, while of the earliest inhabitants of what are now the British Islands, no boat-lore can definitely postulated, the discovery of the famous barge in the Carse of Stirling shows that, 3,000 years before Christ, there must have been some knowledge of navigation; while, of the first Celtic immigrants enough must be assumed, at any rate, to have enabled them successfully to cross the Channel. Of these the Gaelic Celts, landing from Spain upon the coasts of Devon and Cornwall and in Ireland, seem to have been the pioneers, followed by a stronger invasion of Cymric Celts, who landed in Kent and Essex, and afterward drove the Gaels before them into the northern and western fastnesses. Of later Aryans, the first members of the great Teutonic family to land on these shores were, almost certainly, the Belgae, who settled on the south and east coasts; {xii} while the Scillies and Cornwall appear to have been regularly visited by Phoenician traders and Greek merchants from Marseilles--a sea-borne commerce that continued for many years after the first Roman expedition. This took place under Julius Cæsar, first in B.C. 55, and its ostensible purpose seems to prove the existence of some kind of pre-Roman British fleet--Cæsar's declared object being to punish the Britons for having sent assistance in ships and men to the Veneti, a kindred Celtic tribe, with which he was at war on the mainland. He appears to have encountered no opposition from it, however, for when he set sail from the coast of France, somewhere between the present ports of Calais and Boulogne, his fleet of war-galleys and transports crossed unchallenged, as far as the sea was concerned.