Weekly Chillicothe crisis. (Chillicothe, Livingston Co., Mo.) 1878-19??, 1881-03-24


Apparently, the very first London
was Welsh village-an ancient Brit
ish village, the history books would
say-which crowned the top Of Lud-
gate Hill, near where st. Paul's now
stands. The old Welsh, who owned
Britain before the English took it, were
Il race half-hunter, half-cultivators, as
Caesar tells us. In his time, the Brit
ons of the southeastern country, which
consists 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 "duns," or hill-forts, still exist
in numbers all over England, and are
generally known rs "British camps"
Such names as Sinodun, Brendon and
Wimbledon still preserve their memo
ry, while we are familiar with the
Latinized form in Camalodunum, ,Morid-
unum. DUNEDIN, Dunbar, Dundee and
Dunkeld give lis Scottish forms of like
implication. "Down" and "dune" sur
vive as modified modern words from
the same root. As a rule, the syllables
dun" and "don" in place names are
sure indications of an old hill-fort.
The "castles" or rude earthworks
which crown ain ost every height
among the South Downs and the west
ern hills are the last remains of these
old Welsh strongholds. Maiden Castle
near Dorchester, and the earthworks at
Cssbury, Silchester, and Ogbury are
familiar instances. Even before the
Romans, however, the river valleys of
the southeast of Britain were inhabited
by agricultural tribes, with fixed habi-
tatiOns and considerable towns.
There are two great basins in Eng
land which have always possessed the
highest agricultural importance; the
one is that of the Thames, the other
that of the Yorkshire Ouse. So long
as England remained mainly an agri-
cultural country, the two greatest
cities of the land were the respective
centres of these basins, London and
York. And there has been more than
one moment in our history when it
might have seemed doubtful which
was to become ultimately the capital
of the whole kingdom. Now, what
made London the centre of the Thames
Valley, 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
"dun" like ali their neighbors. But
there are not many conspicuous hills
in the flat basin of the Thames be-
tween Richmond and the sea; and
Ludgatc Hill was perhaps the best that
the TrinObantes of Middlesex could
get.
TO be sure, it, could not compare with
the "dun" ut Edinburgh, at Dunbarton,
or at Stirling; but it was high enough
to make a natural fort, and it stood
just above the point where the tide is
distinctly felt. Thus, as the old Welsh
become gradually more and more civil
lied, Il 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 50
little from the wear and tear of CEN
turIes. 1t was not without natural ad-
vantages of situation; for a 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 CRsar's
abortiye attempt upon Britain, and the
reduction of the south coast under
Claudius, we know that a considerable
trading town developed around the old
village. Cunobelin, whose coins of
Roman type are still found from Nor
wich and Chester to Kent, had his
palace at the neighboring station Of
Camalodunum; but London was the
centre of such rude trade as yet exist
ed. Trackways still traceable radiated
thence all over the eastern counties
and the south coast, where the traffic
with Gaul was already important.