This was their invariable system of warfare in the rivers of England; in Germany along system Rhine; along the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne, in France, as well as on the Tagus and Guadalquivir in Spain, where two at least of their large expeditions penetrated. This continued for several centuries, until at last they thought of occupying the country which they had devastated and depopulated, and they began to form permanent settlements in England, Flanders, France, and even Sicily and Naples. When that time had arrived, they showed that, hidden under their ferocious exterior, lay a deep and systematic mind, capable of great thoughts and profound designs. Already in their own rude country they had organized commerce on an extensive scale, and their harbors teemed with richly-laden ships, coming from far distances or preparing to start on long voyages. They had become a great colonizing race, and, after establishing their sway in the Hebrides, the Orkneys, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland, they made England their own, first by the Jute and Anglo-Saxon tribes, then by the arms of Denmark, which was at that time so powerful that England actually became a colony of Copenhagen; and finally they thought of extending their conquests farther south to the Mediterranean Sea, where their ships rode at anchor in the harbors of fair Sicily. We know, from many chronicles written at the time, with what care they surveyed all the countries they occupied, confiscating the land after having destroyed or reduced its inhabitants to slavery; dividing it among themselves and establishing their barbarous laws and feudal customs wherever they went. Dudo of St. Quentin, among other writers, describes at length in his rude poem the army of surveyors intrusted by Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy, with the care of drawing up a map of their conquests in France, for the purpose of dividing the whole among his rough followers and vassals. Of this spirit of organization we intend to speak in the next chapter, when we come to consider the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland; but we are not to conclude that the Northmen became straightway civilized, and that the spirit of refinement at once shed its mild manners and gentle habits over their newly- constructed towns and castles. For a long time they remained as barbarous as ever, with only a system more perfect and a method more scientific--if we may apply such expressions to the case-- in their plunderings and murderous expeditions. Of Hastings, their last pagan sea-kong, Dudo, the great admirer of Northmen and the sycophant of the first Norman dukes in France, has left the following terrible character, on reading which in full we scarcely know whether the poem was written in reproach or praise. We translate from the Latin According to Dudo, he was-- "A wretch accursed and fierce of heart, Unmatched in dark iniquities; A scowling pest of deadly hate, He throve on savage cruelties.