The
boats on the Avon (which signifies river) were baskets of twigs
covered with an ox-skin, which the poor people in Wales use to this
day, and call them curricles.
Within this shire I believe that there were several Reguli, which
often made war upon one another, and the great ditches which run on
the plains and elsewhere so many miles, were (not unlikely) their
boundaries, and withall served for defence against the incursion of
their enemies, as the Picts' Wall, Offa's Ditch, and that in China; to
compare small things to great. Their religion is at large described by
Csesar; their priests were the Druids. Some of their temples I pretend
to have restored; as Anbury, Stonehenge, &c., as also British
sepulchres. Their way of fighting is livelily set down by Caesar. Their
camps, with those of their antagonists, I have set down in another
place. They knew the use of iron; and about Hedington fields, Bromham,
Bowdon, &c. are still ploughed up cinders (i. e. the scoria of melted
iron). They were two or three degrees I suppose less salvage than the
Americans. Till King John's time wolves were in this island; and in
our grandfathers' days more foxes than now, and marterns (a beast of
brown rich furr) at Stanton Park, &c. the race now extinct thereabout.
The Romans subdued and civilized them; at Lekham (Mr. Camden saith)
was a colony of them, as appears there by the Roman coin found there.
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