definite conception, even though the landsman might think of it as merging with Asia. It was a world apart, but within that world was ample fertility, and in its water-paths a natural provision for the intimacy of a family of nations. Water-paths they were, with branchings and crossings, for the boatmen, not venturing out on to the high seas, still sailed between the coasts and the horizon, just as they threaded their way between the two banks of the rivers. In the relatively roadless days, moreover, which followed on the decay of the Roman road system, the boatmen frequented many of the head-waters of the rivers, which we have now abandoned as no longer worth navigating.
There were two fortunate circumstances in regard to the mediæval siege of Europe. On the one hand, the Infidels had not command of inexhaustible man-power, for they were based on arid and sub-arid deserts and steppes, and on comparatively small oasis-lands; on the other hand, the Latin Peninsula was not seriously threatened along its oceanic border, for the Norsemen, though fierce and cruel while they remained Pagan, were based on fiord-valleys even less extensive and less fruitful than the oases, and wherever they settled—in England, Normandy, Sicily, or
