CHAPTER XVIII.

ANTIQUITIES AND ARCHEOLOGY.

ANY doctrine which, either on the strength of their insulation (the word being taken in its strict etymological meaning) or with the view of explaining some particular detail invested with more than usual obscurity, separates the archæology and ethnology of the Channel Islands from that of the nearest portion of the continent of Gaul, carries with it so much undue refinement that, though it may possibly be sound, it should not be hazarded either gratuitously or on light grounds. With the exception of Japan and the Kurile islands, every smaller island on the face of the deep is definitely connected with some portion of the greater islands or continents. With the exception, too, of Iceland and Madagascar, every island is connected with the nearest portion of the continent. Add to this that, without any exception whatever, every island of the size of Jersey, or Guernsey, and equally near the main land, is, for all practical purposes, inhabited at as carly a period as the corresponding part of the continent. The time, then, when the islands under notice were either uninhabited or inhabited by a population different from that of the main land, transcends history.

Now, at the beginning of the historical period, the nearest part of Gaul was Keltic.

At the same time, it does not follow that the conditions of the

continent, when a given island derived from it its first inhabitants, were the same as they were when they were first known to the historian. The island may have been peopled; after which the original population of the continent may have changed. This is a fact of no rare occurrence. Still the presumptions are in favour of the nearest congerers of a given island being found on the opposite continent.

On the other hand, however, it is certain that the whole of Gaul was not originally Keltic. The evidence that in the time of Cæsar the southern part was Iberic is conclusive. It is so, to some extent, at the present moment; inasmuch as the language of a part of Gascony is the same as that of Biscay; indeed, word for word, the two names are the same. In the first century, all Aquitaine was in the same condition as Gascony is now; i.e., it was Basque, Biscayan, or (to use the scientific name) Iberic. The Garonne was the boundary. To the south of it, everything, with the exception of Burdigala, or Bordeaux, was Iberic; to the north, everything Keltic or Gallic.

Since, then, the Iberic frontier has, from the beginning of history, receded, whilst that of the Kelts has advanced; is it not impossible that, at some very early period, like the former, it may have extended so much farther northwards as for Britany and Normandy to have been, more or less, Iberic at the time when they sent forth the first settlers upon Jersey and Guernsey? All that can be said in answer to this is that the possibility of such a state of things should be recognised as an alternative in case certain phenomena require it. However, at the beginning of the historical period, the northern boundary of Iberia was the Garonne.

Of two other populations which the sea may have brought to these parts, and which either commerce or piracy may have taken thus far from their own homes, little need be said except a single word in favour of the high probability of the one and the possibility of the other having been brought thus far west

and thus far south. The first are the Phenicians, of whom few antiquaries fail to say much when they treat of Britain, Spain, and Gaul. The second are the Slavonians of the Baltic and Lower Danube, of whom, as bold sailors and early voyagers, the present writer, on a fitter occasion, would have more to say than many would agree to. To neither were the Channel Islands unknown.

Of anything, however, earlier than either the Kelts or the Iberians in Northern Gaul, there are no definite traces; though, it should be added, that there are not wanting able men who, deducing the majority of the dominant population of modern Europe from Asia, are willing to believe in a primeval race of aborigines, who, spread over the whole continent from the North Cape to the Straits of Gibraltar, from Lapland to Andalusia, are still to be found as actual populations, or else traced in their subterranean remains by means of crania, tumuli, and stone instruments.

At a later period, there was no lack of intrusive settlers from Germany and Scandinavia (and that on both sides of the Channel and all along the coast) from the Orkneys to the Isle of Wight, and from the Scheldt to the Tagus; but, though there is good reason for believing such settlements to have begun at an earlier date than is usually assigned to them, there is nothing which brings them to the south of the Seine during the first or second centuries.

Concerning the Greeks and Romans, our ordinary histories supply sufficient evidence.

Such are the real, probable, and possible factors in the ethnological and historical archæology of the Channel Islands. Anything that is earlier than the Kelts must have its explanation sought for amongst the Iberians. Everything later than the Kelts is Phenician, Slavonic (?), Greek, Roman, German, or Scandinavian. Beyond this field, no antiquary need wander.

MOST ANCIENT MONUMENTS.

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The objects of the greatest antiquarian importance in the Island are, at the same time, the oldest; but they are, also, those of which the origin is the most obscure; and in this obscurity lies much of the interest. They affect the imagination; they stimulate the curiosity. In many countries, they urge it on into undue and crude speculations; but, in Guernsey at least, the study of them has been taken up with circumspection as well as zeal.

They belong to one and the same class. When we name them from the religion, superstition, or mythology, to which they are mostly referred, we call them Druidic. When the name is determined by the family or stock with which they are chiefly connected, the denomination is Keltic. But as in each of these terms a slight (though scarcely an illegitimate) amount of hypothesis is involved, it is best to call them what they really are, cromlechs, kistvaens, or menhirs: all words of Keltic origin, and all with a meaning in the Keltic dialects. cromlech is a heavy stone; a kist vaen is a chest of stone; a menhir is a long stone. None of them, however, are names belonging to the Islands; indeed they can scarcely be called names of popular and general use anywhere. They are scientific terms; and their sense is definite and technical. But, unlike

many other scientific terms, they are, though strange in sound to the English ear, not only convenient but intelligible, in Wales and Britany, the chief districts where the objects which they denote are to be found.

The cromlechs in the islands remind the observer of altars or chambers, according as they remain closed, or have their cavities laid open. One of such chambers is, at the present time, what it has long been, a hovel or cow-house, stercore fœda bovino. Most of them, however, are altars, a name which partakes of the nature of tradition, since it seems to have originated in a time when vestiges of the old paganism had become extinct. Those who first called them so can scarcely be supposed to have speculated on their use; and, certainly, they never used them as altars themselves. This name, then, is subsequent to Christianity. That others were older, we shall soon find reason for believing.

It is to Jersey that the grandest cromlech of the islands, undoubtedly, belongs; if, indeed, an object can be said to belong to a country from which it has been taken away. Until 1788 it stood as in the engraving in the last page.

It was sixty-six feet in circumference, composed of forty-five stones, between seven feet in height, six in breadth, and four in thickness. It contained four perfect cells, and one destroyed. The entrance, running east and west, was fifteen feet long, four feet broad, and four feet four inches high. A medal of Claudius was found in one of the cells. About fifty yards south from the temple were five tumuli, masoned on every side, but not paved, lying east and west.

However, in 1788, it was presented by the States of the island to General Conway, the Governor, and, by him reconstructed in his park in Oxfordshire.

Such is the notice of it by Gough in his notes on Camden; and in an expansion of a short notice of Stukeley's, communicated to the Society of Antiquaries in 1761, and containing