I cannot therefore but believe that Britain really was, as described, disarmed and disheartened, and most probably so depopulated as to be incapable of any serious defence: a condition which throws a hideous light upon the nature of the Roman rule and the practices of Roman civilized life. ----- Footnote 779: Gildas probably wrote within two centuries of the time when the Romans left Britain. Two hundred years it is true offer a large margin for imagination, especially when it is Keltic, and employed about national history: but Gildas’s report, credible in itself, is confirmed by other evidence. Footnote 780: Gild. Hist. xiv. Footnote 781: Ibid. xxii. Footnote 782: Gild. Hist. xxvi. Foreign wars, those of the Britons and Saxons;—Civil wars, those of the Britons among themselves; perhaps those of the Saxon kings. Footnote 783: “Nam laniant seipsos mutuo, nec pro exigui victus brevi sustentaculo miserrimorum civium latrocinando temperabant: et augebantur extraneae clades domesticis motibus, quo et huiusmodi crebris direptionibus vacuaretur omnis regio totius cibi baculo, excepto venatoriae artis solatio.” Gild. xix. Half a century in an unexhausted soil is ample time to convert the most nourishing district into thick brushwood and impervious _bush_. Beech and fir, which, though said by Strabo to be not indigenous, must have been plentiful in the fifth century, do not require fifty years to become large trees: the elm, alder and even oak are well-sized growths at that age. Even thorn, maple and bramble with such a course before them are very capable of making an imposing wilderness of underwood. Footnote 784: