While Alexander
was overrunning the world by his arms, and Greece was enlightening
it with her arts,
Scotland lay hidden beneath the cloud of barbarism, and had neither
name nor place among the nations of the earth.1
Its isolation, however, was not complete
and absolute. Centuries before the great Macedonian had commenced
his victorious career, the adventurous navigators of the Phoenician
seaboard had explored the darkness of the hyperborean ocean. The
first to steer by the pole-star, they boldly adventured where less
skillful mariners would have feared to penetrate. Within the hazy
confine of the North Sea they descried an island, swathed in a mild
if humid air, and disclosing to the eye, behind its frontier screen
of chalk cliffs, the pleasing prospect of wooded hills, and far expanding
meadows, roamed over by numerous herds, and inhabitants. The Phoenicians
oft revisited this remote, and to all but themselves unknown shore,2 but
the enriching trade which they carried on with it they retained for
centuries in their own hands. Their ships might be seen passing out
at the "Pillars of Hercules" on voyages of unknown destination,
and, after the lapse of months, they would return laden with the
products of regions, which had found as yet no name on the chart
of geographer.3 But the source of this trade they kept
a secret from the rest of the nations. By and by, however, it began
to be rumoured that the fleets seen going and returning on these
mysterious voyages traded with an island that lay far to the north,
and which was rich in a metal so white and lustrous that it had begun
to be used as a substitute for silver. In this capacity it was employed
now to lend a meretricious glitter to the robe of the courtesan,
and now to impart a more legitimate splendour to the mantle of the
magistrate.
In
process of time other sea-faring peoples, taught by the example
of the Phoenicians to sail by the
stars, and to brave the terrors of unknown seas in pursuit of
wealth, followed in the track which these early merchants had been
the first
to open. The tin of Cornwall and of the Scilly Islands, the "Cassiterides" 4 of
the ancients, began to circulate among the nations of Asia Minor,
and was not unknown even to the tribes of the Arabian desert.
It is interesting to think that Britain had already begun to
benefit
nations which knew not as yet to pronounce her name. But it was
on the Phoenician shore, and among the maritime tribes that nestled
in the
bays of Lebanon, that the main stream of this traffic continued
to diffuse its various riches. The wealth and power of the Phoenician
state were largely owing to its trade with Britain. Its capital
Sidon,
was nursed by the produce of our mines into early greatness.
The site of Rome was still a morass; the cities of Greece were
only mean
hamlets; the palaces of Babylon were brick-built structures;
and Jerusalem was but a hill fort; while Sidon had risen in a
splendour
and grown to a size that made men speak of her, even in the age
of Joshua, as the "Great Sidon."
Nor was Sidon the only city
on that shore that owed its greatness to the remote and barbarous
Britain. Tyre,5 the daughter of Sidon, feeding her power
at the same distant springs, came ultimately to surpass in wealth,
and eclipse in beauty, the mother city. No sublimer ode has come
down to us than that which has as its burden the greatness and the
fall of Tyrethe number of her ships, the multitude of her merchants,
the splendour of her palaces, the exceeding loftiness of her pomp
and pride, and the dark night in which her day of glory was to close.
The bronze
gates set up by Shalmanezer to commemorate his triumphs, exhumed
but the other day
from the ruined mounds of Assyria, present to modern eyes a vivid
picture of the greatness of the Phoenician cities. On these gates
Tyre is seen seated on her island-rock, encompassed by strong
walls, with serrated battlements and flanking towers. A broad avenue
leads
from her gates to the sea. Down this path is being borne her
rich and various merchandise, which we see ferried across to the
mainland.
Ingots of gold and silver, rare woods, curious bowls, precious
stones, spices, dyed cloths, embroidered garments, and similar
products brought
from far off lands, form the tribute which we here see laid at
the feet of the conqueror Shalmanezer. The monarch in his robes
of state,
a tiara on his head, stands a little in advance of a brilliant
staff of officers and princes, while an attendant eunuch shades
him with
a richly embroidered umbrella from the hot sun, and a deputation
of Tyrian merchants offer him the submission of the now tributary
city. This was in the year B.C. 859.6
But though the doom
foretold by the prophet has long since fallen upon this ancient mistress
of the seas, her ruin is not so utter but that we may trace at this
day the dimensions of those harbours from which the fleets engaged
in the traffic with Britain set sail, and were, on their return,
they discharged their rich cargoes. The harbours of Tyre, as their
ruins, still visible below the waves, show, had an average area of
twelve acres. The ports of Sidon were of a somewhat larger capacity.
Their average area was twenty acres,so do the scholars of the "Palestine
Exploration" tell us. We who are familiar with the "Leviathans" that
plow the deep in modern times, cannot but feel surprise at the diminutive
size of the craft employed in the Tyrian traffic, as judged of by
the limited capacity of the basins in which they unloaded their wares.
A modern ironclad would hardly venture into a port of so diminutive
a size. But if the ships of Tyre were of small tonnage, so much greater
the evidence of the skill and courage of the crews that manned them,
and the enterprise of the merchants that sent them forth on such
distant voyages. And it is pleasant to reflect that even at that
early age, the riches of our mines formed an important factor in
the commercial activity, the artistic taste, and the varied grandeur,
of which the narrow strip of territory that stretches along on the
eastern shore of the Mediterranean, beneath the cliffs of Lebanon,
was then the seat.7
The palmiest era of the Phoenician
commerce was from the twelfth to the sixth century before Christ.
It follows, that Britain, with whom these early merchants traded,
was then inhabited, and probably had been so for some considerable
time previous. At what time did the first immigrants arrive on its
shore, and from what quarter did they come? We cannot tell the year,
nor even the century, when the first wanderer from across the sea
sighted its cliffs, and moored his bark on its strand; nor can be
solve the question touching the first peopling of our island, otherwise
than by an approximating process. In a brief discussion of this point,
we shall avail ourselves of the guidance furnished by great ethnological
principles and facts, as well as of the help given us by historic
statements.
The
earliest and most authentic of all historiesfor the monumental and historic evidence of
the Bible does not lessen but grow with the current of the centuriestells
us that the Ark rested, after the flood, on one of the mountains
of Ararat. Here, at the centre of earth, is placed the second
cradle of the human family, and to this point are we to trace
up all the
migrations of mankind. The Ark might have been set down by the
retiring waters on the verge of Asia, or on the remotest boundary
of America;
or it might have been floated on currents, or driven by winds
far into the polar regions. Escaping all these mischances, here,
in the
central regions of the world, and probably within sight of those
plains with which Noah had been familiar before the flood overspread
the earth, did the Ark deposit its burden. It was the first great
providential act towards the human family in post-diluvian times.
Let
us take our stand beside "the
worlds grey fathers," and survey with them, from the summits
where the ark is seen to rest, the singular framework of rivers,
mountains, and plains spread out around the spot. The various fortunes
and destinies of their descendants lie written before the eyes of
the first fathers of mankind on the face of the silent earth; for
undoubted it is that in the geographical arrangements of the globe
is so far laid the ground-work of the history, political and moral,
of its nations. The physical conditions of a region assist insensible
but powerfully in shaping the mental and moral peculiarities of its
inhabitants, and prognosticate dimly the events of which any particular
region is to become the theatre. The mountain-chains that part kingdoms,
the oceans that divide continents by diversifying the climatic influences
of the globe, enrich that "one blood" of which all the
nations of the earth partake, and by engendering a difference of
temperament and aptitude, and stimulating to a variety of pursuit
prepare more variously endowed instrumentalities for the worlds
work, and impart to history a breadth, a variety, and a grandeur
which otherwise would have been lacking to it.
From this new starting point
of the race great natural pathways are seen to stretch out in all
directions. In the heart of the Armenian mountains, close to the
resting place of the ark, four great rivers take their rise, and
proceeding thence in divergent courses, flow towards the four quarters
of the globe. A tribe or colony in quest of habitations naturally
follows the course of some great stream, seeing the fertility which
its waters create along its banks afford pasture for their flocks
and food for themselves. Of the four great rivers which here have
their birth, the Euphrates turned off to the west, and pointed the
way to Palestine and Egypt and Greece. The second of these great
streams the Tigris, sending its floods to the south, and traversing
with rapid flow the great plains which lie between the mountains
of Armenia and the Persian gulf, would open the road to India and
the countries of the East.
The Araxes and the Phasis,
rising on the other side of the mountain-chain which here forms the
water-shed between Asia and Europe, and flowing towards the north,
would draw off, in that direction, no inconsiderable portion of the
human tide that was now going forth from this central region to people
the wilderness, into which, since the flood, the earth had again
reverted. The settlers who proceeded along the banks of the Araxes,
whose waters fall into the Caspian, would people the northern and
north-eastern lands of Asia. Those who took the Phasis as the guide
of their exploring footsteps, would arrive in due time in the west
and north of Europe. By the several roads spread out around their
starting-point, do these emigrants journey to those distant and unknown
homes where their posterity in after ages are to found kingdoms,
build cities, become great in arms, or seek renown in the nobler
pursuits of peace.
But farther, this mountain-girdle,
which is drawn round the middle of the globe, and which has two great
rivers on either side of it flowing in opposite directions and in
divergent channels, parts the earth in two grand divisions. It gives
us a northern and a southern world. In this striking arrangement
we see two stages prepared in anticipation of two great dramas, an
earlier and a later, to be enacted in after time. The one was destined
to introduce, and the other to conclude and crown the business of
the world. Let us mark what a difference betwixt the natural endowments
of the two zones, yet how perfect the adaptation of each to the races
that were to occupy them, and the part these races were to play in
the affairs of the world!
On the south of the great
mountain-chain which bisected Asia and Europe was a world blessed
with the happiest physical conditions. The skies were serene, the
air was warm, and the soil was molient and fertile. How manifest
is it that this favoured region had been prepared with a special
view to its occupancy by the early races, whose knowledge of the
arts did not enable them meanwhile to construct dwellings such as
should suffice to protect them from the cold of a northern sky, and
whose skill in husbandry was not enough, as yet, to draw from less
fertile soils the necessaries of life in sufficient abundance. In
this genial clime the inhabitants could dispense with houses of stone;
a tent of hair-cloth would better meet their wants; and hardly was
it necessary the their exuberant soil should be turned by the plow;
without labour almost it would yield the food of man. Here then was
meet dwelling-place for the infancy and youth of the human family;
the brilliant light, the sparkling waters, the gorgeous tints of
the sky, and the rich fruitage of field and tree, would combine to
quicken the sensibilities and stimulate the imagination of man, and
so fit him for those more elegant acquisitions and those lighter
labours in which his youth was to be passed. Here the arts of music
and painting grew up, and here, too, passion poured itself forth
in poetry and song. In these voluptuous climes man perfected his
conceptions as regards symmetry of form and melody of speech, and
from these ages and lands have come to us the incomparable models
of statuary, of architecture, and of eloquence.
"Graiis
dedit ore rotundo Musa, loqui."
Nor, even yet, has the glow
of morning altogether left the sky of the world. The pure and beautiful ideals which
these young races succeeded in perfecting for us still continue to
delight. They exert to this day a refining and elevating influence
of the whole of life. Our graver thoughts and more matter-of-fact
labours wear something of the golden lacquering of these early times.
On the north of the great
mountain-wall which, as we have said, parts the world in two, the
ground runs off in a mighty downward slope, diversified by forests
and lakes, and furrowed by mountain-chains, and finally terminates
in the steppes of Tartary and the frozen land of Siberia. This vast
descent would conduct man by slow journeys from the genial air and
teeming luxuriance of his primeval dwelling to the stony soils, the
stunted products, and the biting sky of a northern latitude. The
boundless plains spread out on this mighty decline refuse their harvests
save to the skill of the hand and the sweat of the brow. In vain
the inhabitant holds out his cup to have it filled with the spontaneous
bounty of the earth. But if nature has denied to these regions the
feathery palm, the odorous gum, and the precious jewel, she has provided
an ample compensation in having ordained that products of infinitely
greater price should here be ripened. This zone was to be the training
ground of the hardier races. Here, in their contests with the ruggedness
of nature, were they do acquire the virtues of courage, of perseverance,
and of endurance, and by the discipline were they to be prepared
to step upon the stage, and take up the weightier business of the
world, when the earlier races had fulfilled their mission, and closed
their brief but brilliant career. Here, in a word, on these stern
soils, and under these tempestuous skies, was to be set that hardy
stock on which the precious grafts of liberty and Christianity were
to be implanted in days to come. With the advent of the northern
races the real business of the world began.
When
Noah comes forth from the Ark we see him accompanied by three
sonsShem, Ham, and
Japhet. These are the three fountain-heads of the worlds population. "These
are the three sons of Noah, and of them was the whole earth overspread." 8 "Peleg," who
lived in the fifth generation from Noah, is set up as a great finger-post
at the parting of the ways, "for in his days was the earth
divided." 9 And
it is strikingly corroborative of the truth of this statement, that
after four thousand years, during which climate, migration, and numerous
other influences have been acting unceasingly on the species, all
tending to deepen the peculiarities of race, and to widen the distinctions
between nations, the population of the world at this day, by whatever
test we try it, whether that of physical characteristic, or by the
surer proof of language, is still resolvable into three grand groups,
corresponding to the three patriarchs of the race, Shem, Ham and
Japhet.
The descendants of Ham, crossing
the narrow bridge between Asia and Africa, the Isthmus of Suez to
wit, planted themselves along the banks of the Nile, finding in that
rich valley a second plain of Shinar, and in the great river that
waters it another Euphrates. Egypt is known buy its inhabitants as
the land of Mizraim to this day. From the black loamy Delta, which
reposes so securely betwixt the two great deserts of the world, and
which the annual overflow of the Nile clothes with an eternal luxuriance,
Ham spread his swarthy swarms over the African continent. Shem turned
his face towards Arabia and India, and his advancing bands crossing
the Indus and the Ganges, overflowed the vast and fertile plains
which are bounded by the lofty Himalayas on the one side, and washed
by the Indian Ocean on the other. An illustrious member of the Semitic
family was recalled westward to occupy Palestine, where his posterity,
as the divinely-appointed priesthood of the world, dwelt apart with
a glory all their own. Japhet, crossing the mountainous wall which
rose like a vast partition betwixt the north and the south, poured
the tide of his numerous and hardy descendants down the vast slope
of the northern hemisphere over Europe, and the trans-Caucasian regions
of Asia, with, at times, a reflex wave that flowed back into the
territories of Shem. Thus was the splendid inheritance of a world
divided amongst the three sons of Noah.
Our main business is to track
the migration of the sons of Japhet, and see by what route they travelled
towards our island. From their starting point in the highlands of
Armenia, or on the plain of the Euphrates, two great pathways offer
themselves, by either of which, or by both, their migrating hordes
might reach the shores of the distant Britain. There is the great
hollow which Nature has scooped out between the giant Atlas and the
mountains of the Alps, and which forms the basin of the Mediterranean
Sea. Moving westward through this great natural cleft, and dropping
colonies on the fair islands, and by the sheltered bays of its delicious
shores, they would people in succession the soil of Greece and the
countries of Italy and Spain. Pushed on from behind by their ever
increasing numbers, or drawn by the powerful attraction of new habitations,
they maintain their slow but inevitable advance across the rugged
Pyrenees and the broad and fertile plains of France. The van of the
advancing horde is now in sight of Albion. They can descry the gleam
of its white cliffs across the narrow channel that separates it from
the continent; and passing over, they find a land, which, though
owned as yet by only the beast of prey, offers enough in the various
produce of its soil and the hidden treasures of its rocks to reward
them for the toil of their long journey and to induce them to make
it the final goal of their wanderings.
By
this route, we know, did the clans and tribes springing from
Javanthe Ion of the Greekstravel
to the west. We trace the footprints of his sons, Elishah, Tarshish,
Kittim, and Dodanim all along the northern shore of the Mediterranean,
from the Lebanon to the Pyrenees, notably in Greece and Italy, less
palpably in Cyprus and Spain, attesting to this day the truth of
the Bibles statement, that by them were the "isles of
the Gentiles," that is, the western seaboard of Asia Minor and
the northern coast of the Mediterranean, "peopled."
Meanwhile, another branch
of the great Japhethian family is on its way by slow marches to the
northern and western world by another route. This great emigrant
host proceeds along the great pathways which have been so distinctly
traced out by the hand of Nature on the surface of the globe. The
Araxes and the Phasis are the guide of their steps. They descend
the great slope of northern Asia, and winding round the shores of
the Euxine, they tread their way through a boundless maze of river
and morass, of meadow and forest, and mountain-chain, and stand at
length on the shores of that ocean that washes the flats of Holland
and the headlands of Norway: and thus of the human tide which we
see advancing towards our island, which is still lying as the waters
of the flood had left it, the one division, flowing along through
the basin of the Mediterranean, finds egress by the Pillars of Hercules,
and the other, rolling down the great northern slope of the Caucasian
chain, issues forth at the frozen doors of the Baltic.
This
parting of the emigrant host into two great lands, and the sending
of them round to their
future home by two different routes, had in it a great moral
end. There are worse schools for a nation destined for future service,
than a long and arduous journey on which they have to suffer
hunger
and brave danger. The horde of slaves that left Egypt of old,
having finished their "forty years" in the "great and terrible
wilderness," emerged on Canaan a disciplined and courageous
nation. The route by which these two Japhethian bands journeyed to
their final possessions, left on each a marked and indelible stamp.
The resemblance between the two at the beginning of their journey,
as regards the great features of the Japhethian image, which was
common to both, was, we can well imagine, much altered and diversified
by the time they had arrived at the end of it, and our country in
consequence, came to be stocked with a race more varied in faculty,
richer in genius, and sturdier in intellect than its occupants would
probably have been, but for the disciplinary influences to which
they were subjected while yet on the road to it. The aborigines of
Albion combined the strength of the north with the passion of the
south. If the two great hosts that mingled on its soil, the one,
passing under the freezing sky of the Sarmatian plains, and combatting
with flood and storm on their way, arrived in their new abode earnest,
patient, and courageous. The other, coming round by the bright and
genial shores of the Mediterranean, were lively and volatile and
brimming with rich and lofty impulses. Though sprung of the same
stock, they came in this way to unite the qualities of different
races and climesthe gravity of the Occident with the warm
and thrilling enthusiasm of the Orient.
The stream that descended
the slopes of the Caucasus, passing betwixt the Caspian and the Euxine,
would arrive on our eastern sea-board, and people that part of our
island which fronts the German Ocean. The other current, which flowed
along by the Mediterranean, and turned northward over France and
Spain, would have its course directed towards our western coasts.
In the different temperaments that mark the population of the two
sides of our island, we trace the vestiges of this long and devious
peregrination. The strong Teutonic fibre of our eastern sea-board,
and the poetic fire that glows in the men of our western mountains,
give evidence at this day of various original endowments in this
one population. These mixed qualities are seen working together in
the daily life of the people, which exhibits a sustained and fruitful
industry, fed and quickened by a latent enthusiasm. The presence
of the two qualities is traceable also in their higher and more artistic
pursuits, as for instance, in their literary productions, which even
when they kindle into the passionate glow of the East, are always
seen to have as their substratum that cool and sober reason which
is the characteristic of the West. Most of all is this fine union
discernible, on those occasions when a great principle stirs the
soul of the nations, and its feeling find vent in an overmastering
and dazzling outburst of patriotism.
We
do not know the number of links which connected the Patriarch of
the Armenian mountains
with that generation of his descendants, who were the first to set
food on the Shores of Britain; but we seem warranted in concluding
that Gomer and Ashkenaz were the two great fathers of the first British
population. The nomadic hordes that we see descending the vast slope
that leads down to the Scandinavian countries and the coast of the
White Sea, are those of Gomer. This much do their footsteps, still
traceable, attest. They gave their names of the lands over which
their track lay, and these memorials, more durable than written record
or even pillar of stone, remain to this day, the ineffaceable mementoes
of that primeval immigration by which Europe was peopled. Here is
Gomer-land (Germany) lying on their direct route: for this track
was far too extensive and fertile not to commend itself to the permanent
occupation of a people on the out-look for new habitations. "The
Celts, from the Euxine to the Baltic," say Pinkerton, "were
commonly called Cimmerii, a name noted in Grecian history
and fable; and from their antiquity so obscure that
a Cimmerian darkness dwells upon them. From the ancients we learn
to a certainty, that they were the same people with the Cimbri, and
that they extended from the Bosphorus Cimmerius on the Euxine, to
the Cimbric Chersonese of Denmark, and to the Rhine."10 The
main body of these immigrants would squat down on the soil at each
successive halt, and only the front rank would be pushed forward
into the unpeopled wilderness. Their progress, often retarded by
scarce penetrable forest and by swollen river, would be at length
conclusively arrested on the shores of the North Sea; and yet not
finding even there. Passing over in such craft as their skill enabled
them to constructa fleet of canoes, hollowed out of the trunks
of oaks, felled in the German foreststhey would take possession
of Britain, and begin to people a land, till then a region of silence
or solitude, untrodden by human foot since the period of the Flood,
if not since the era of the creation.
The new-comers brought with
them the tradition of their descent. They called themselves Cymry
of Kymbry. They are the Gimmirrai of the Assyrian monuments. The
Greeks, adopting their own designation, styled them Kimmerioi, and
the Latins Cimbri. Cymry is the name by which the aborigines of
Britain have uniformly distinguished themselves from the remotest
antiquity up to the present hour; and their language, which they
have retained through all revolutions, they have invariably called Cymraeg, which
means the language of the aborigines, or "the language of the
first race." 11 It is reasonable to conclude," says
Pinkerton in his learned "Enquiry into the History of Scotland," "that
the north and east of Britain were peopled from Germany by the Cimbri
of the opposite shores, who were the first inhabitants of Scotland,
who can be traced, from leaving Cumraig names to rivers and mountains,
even in the furthest Hebudes."12