Dim are the glimpses we catch of the early condition of the Helvetians, but the mist that enshrouds this people clears, though slowly, at the end of the second century before Christ, when they came into close contact with the Romans who chronicled their deeds. The Helvetians themselves, indeed, though not ignorant of the art of writing, were far too much occupied in warfare to be painstaking annalists. At the Celto-Roman period of which we are treating, Helvetia comprised all the territory lying between Mount Jura, Lake Geneva, and Lake Constance, with the exception of Basle, which included Graubünden, and reached into St. Gall and Glarus. It was parcelled out amongst many tribes, even as it is in our own day. The Helvetians, who had previously occupied all the land between the Rhine and the Main, had been driven south by the advancing Germans, and had colonized the fertile plains and the lower hill grounds of Switzerland, leaving to others the more difficult Alpine regions. They split into four tribes, of which we know the names of three--the Tigurini, Toygeni, and Verbigeni. The first named seem to have settled about Lake Morat, with Aventicum (Avenches) as their capital. Basle was the seat of the Rauraci; to the west of Neuchâtel was that of the Sequani; whilst Geneva belonged to the wild Allobroges. The Valais[7] district was inhabited by four different clans, and was known as the "Poenine valley," on account of the worship of Poeninus on the Great St. Bernard, where was a temple to the deity. In the Ticino were the Lepontines, a Ligurian tribe whose name still lingers in "Lepontine Alps." The mountain fastnesses of the Grisons (Graubünden) were held by the hardy Rhætians, a Tuscan tribe, who, once overcome by the Romans, speedily adopted their speech and customs. Romansh, a corrupt Latin, holds its own to this day in the higher and remoter valleys of that canton.