linen or ignorance of its use. At a somewhat later period, however, it appears from Pliny that linen cloth was fabricated in all parts of Gaul. The dyes which the Britons used for their cloth were probably extracted from the same plant from which they obtained those with which they marked their skin, namely, the isatis, or woad. "Its colour," says a late writer, "was somewhat like indigo, which has in a great degree superseded the use of it....The best woad usually yields a blue tint, but that herb, as well as indigo, when partially deoxidated, has been found to yield a fine green...The robes of the fanatic British women, witches, or priestesses, were black, vestis feralis; and that colour was a third preparation of woad by the application of a greater heat."[1] Woad is still cultivated for the purposes of dyeing in France, and also, to a smaller extent, in England.
Some of these facts would seem to afford us reason for suspecting that Britain was better known even to the Roman world before the two expeditions of Cæsar than is commonly supposed, or than we should be led to infer from Cæsar's own account of those attempts. We may even doubt whether he was himself as ignorant of the country as he affects to have been. He may very possibly have wished to give to his achievement the air of a discovery as well as of a conquest. Tacitus appears to be disposed to claim for Agricola, a century and a half later, the honour of having first ascertained Britain to be an island, although even Cæsar professes no doubt about that point; and, from the language of every preceding writer who mentions the name of the country, its insular character must evidently have been well known from time immemorial. The Romans did nothing directly, and, notwithstanding all their conquests, little even indirectly, in geographical discovery; almost wherever they penetrated the Greeks or the Orientals had been before them; and any reputation gained in that field would naturally be valued in proportion to its rarity. But, however this may be, Cæsar's invasion certainly
