AN   ACCOUNT
or
NORTH-BRITAIN.
CHAP.   I.
Introductory Notices of its General State.
§ I. Of its First Settlement] THE British Isles must have been settled
during the earliest ages of the postdiluvian world, if we may credit the in-
structive notices of the stone monuments that still offer themselves to our
observation, rather than the ill-informed intimations of ancient authors, who are
little worthy of our credit. While the impulse of the dispersion still continued,
the pristine colonists arrived, probably, from the nearest coast of Gaul, as
intelligent scholars are at length disposed to acknowledge. The names which
the original planters imposed on the great objects of nature, and which have
continued for the information of every age, exhibit as well undoubted specimens
of their ancient tongue, as the real lineage of the tribes who occupied the Bri-
tish world (a). The first planters soon spread their settlements with the usual
enterprise of colonists into every district of the greater island, the chief scene
of the Gaulish adventurers (6).
(a) Caledonia, ch. i.                                                     (6) Id,
3                                                                B