here mentioned, yet we may possibly, by means of probable conjectures, arrive at something like a knowledge of the place they occupy in the history of the people of the north, and west of Europe. All facts, for instance, seem to shew that Europe was not peopled at once, by a race of mankind who bore in themselves the germ of all future progress, but that this race has gradually received the addition of others, who continually supplanted the former, and laid the foundation for a more advanced civilization. The first people who inhabited the north of Europe were without doubt nomadic races, of whom the Laplanders, or as they were formerly called, the Fins, are the remains. They had no settled habitations, but wandered from place to place, and lived on vegetables, roots, hunting and fishing. After them came another race, who evidently advanced a step farther, since they did not follow this unsettled wandering life, but possessed regular and fixed habitations. This people diffused themselves along those coasts which afforded them fitting opportunities for hunting and fishing; while voyages by sea and agriculture also appear to have commenced among them. This race however seems not to have penetrated the interior parts of Europe, which were at that time full of immense woods and bogs; they wanted metal for felling trees and so opening the interior of the country, for which purpose their simple implements of stone were insufficient. They followed only the open coasts, and the shores of the rivers, or large lakes. To this period belong the Cromlechs, the Giants' chambers, and the antiquities of stone, and bone, exhumed from them.
Then again came races who possessed metals, and some degree of civilization, and they, being able to cut down the woods, occupied not only those regions of the coast which had been previously inhabited, but also the interior of the country. But they likewise appear, in the first instance, to have followed the course of the rivers, and, from them, in the progress of time, to have spread themselves more and more over the neighbouring countries. It was by them that agriculture,
