When we come to the Aryan settlements, we cannot positively determine which among the Aryan races of Europe were the earliest settlers in point of time. ♦Greeks and Italians.♦ The great race which, in its many sub-divisions, contains the _Greeks_, the _Italians_, and the nations more immediately akin to them, are the first among the European Aryans to show themselves in the light of history; but it does not necessarily follow that they were actually the first in point of settlement. ♦Celts.♦ It may be that, while they were pressing through the Mediterranean peninsulas and islands, the _Celts_ were pressing their way through the solid central land of Europe. The Celts were clearly the vanguard of the Aryan migration within their own range, the first swarm which made its way to the shores of the Ocean. Partially in Spain, more completely in Gaul and the British Islands, they displaced or assimilated the earlier inhabitants, who, under their pressure and that of later conquerors, have been gradually shut up in the small mountainous region which they still keep. Of the Celtic migration we have no historical accounts, but all probability would lead us to think that the Celts whom in historic times we find on the Danube and south of the Alps were not emigrants who had followed a backward course from the great settlement in Transalpine Gaul, but rather detachments which had been left behind on the westward journey. Without attempting to settle questions as to the traces of Celtic occupancy to be found in other lands, it is enough for our purpose that, at the beginnings of their history, we find the Celts the chief inhabitants of a region stretching from the Rubico to the furthest known points of Britain. Gaul, Cisalpine and Transalpine, is their great central land, though even here they are not exclusive possessors; they share the land with a non-Aryan remnant to the south-west, and with the next wave of Aryan new-comers to the north-east.