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A Short History of Scotland
The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Short History of Scotland, by Andrew Lang
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Title: A Short History of Scotland
Author: Andrew Lang
Release Date: May 31, 2005 [eBook #15955]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SHORT HISTORY OF SCOTLAND***
Transcribed from the 1911 William Blackwood and Sons edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
A SHORT HISTORY OF SCOTLAND
CHAPTER I.
SCOTLAND AND THE ROMANS.If we could see in a magic mirror the country now called Scotland as it was when the Romans under Agricola (81 A.D.) crossed the Border, we should recognise little but the familiar hills and mountains. The rivers, in the plains, overflowed their present banks; dense forests of oak and pine, haunted by great red deer, elks, and boars, covered land that has long been arable. There were lakes and lagoons where for centuries there have been fields of corn. On the oldest sites of our towns were groups of huts made of clay and wattle, and dominated, perhaps, by the large stockaded house of the tribal prince. In the lochs, natural islands, or artificial islets made of piles (crannogs), afforded standing-ground and protection to villages, if indeed these lake- dwellings are earlier in Scotland