The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1881-03-17
The First London.

Apparently. the very first London
was Welsh village-an ancient British
village, the history books would say
which crowned the top of Ludgate
Hill, near where ST. Paufs now stands.
The old Welsh, who owned Britain be-
fore the English took it, were q race
half hunters, half-cultivators. as Cesar
tells us. In his time, the Britons Of
the southeastern country, which con-
sists of open cultivable plains, were
tillers of the soil; while those of the
hilly northwest were still pastoral no
mads or savage hunters, dwelling in
movable villages. and having mere
empty forts on the hill tops, to which
the whole population retreated with
their cattle in case of invasion. These
dams, or hill-forts. still exist in num-
bers over all England, and are gener-
ally known as 'British camps" Such
names as Sinodun, Brendon and VIM
bledon still preserve their memory;
while we are familiar with the Latin
lied form in Camalodunum, Moridun-
um and Branodunum. Dunedin, Dun
bar, Dundee and Dunkeld give us
Scottish forms of like implication.
DoUn and dune survive as modified
modern words from the same root. As
q rule. the syllables dun and don in
place names are sure indications of an
old hill-fort, The ''castles" or rude
earthworks which crown almost every
height among the South Downs and
the western hills are the last remains
of these old Welsh strongholds. Maiden
Castle, near Dorchester, and the earth
works at Cissbury, Silchester and Og-
bury are familiar instances. Even be-
fDvo kn hnxunuor a
river valleys of the southeast of Britain
were inhabited by agricultural tribes,
with fixed habitations and considerable
towns. There. are two great basins in
England which have always possessed
the highest agricultural importance;
the one is that Of the Thames, the other
that of the Yorkshire sOuse. So
long as England remained mainly
an agricultural country, the two
greatest cities of the land were
the respective centers of these ba-
sins, London and York. And there
have been more than one moment in our
history when it might have seemed
doubtful which was to become ultimate
| ly the capital of the whole kingdom.
Now, what made London the center OF
the Thames VallevP for that, of course,
was the first step toward making it the
metropolis of the British Empire. Well,
the Welsh tribe which inhabited the
lower part of the valley must have
originally needed a dun like all their
neighbors. But there are not many
conspicuous hills in the fiat basin OF the
Thames between Richmond and the sea;
and Ludgate Hill was perhaps the best
that the Trinobantes OF Middlesex could
get. To be sure. it could not compare
with the dun at Edinburgh. at Dunbar
ton, or at Stirling; but it was high
enough to make q natural fort, and il
stood just above the point where the
tide is distinctly felt. Thus, as the old
Welsh became gradually more and more
! civilized. regular town grew up
around the low dun, and bore from the
very first its modern name of London,
for no name in England has altered SO
little with the wear and tear -centu,
ries. 1t was not without natural ad-
vantages of situation; for belt OF
marshes girt it round on every side
from the estuary of the Lea and the
Finsbury Flats to the Fleet River and
London Fen, where the Strand now
stretches. In the interval between
Caius CAESARS abortive attempt upon
Britain, and the reduction of the south
coast under Claudius, we know that q
considerable trading town developed
around the old village. Cunobelin,
whose coins of Roman type are still
found from Norwich and Chester to
Kent, had his palace at the neighbor.
ing station of Camalodunum; but Lon.
don was the center of such rude trade
as yet existed. Trackways still trace
able radiated thence all over the east.
ern counties and the south coast, where
the traffic with Gaul was already i'm.
portant Magazine.