CHAPTER I.

JULIUS CAESAR. B.C. 55.


Nearly two thousand years ago there was a brave captain whose name
was Julius Caesar. The soldiers he led to battle were very strong,
and conquered the people wherever they went. They had no gun or
gunpowder then; but they had swords and spears, and, to prevent
themselves from being hurt, they had helmets or brazen caps on their
heads, with long tufts of horse-hair upon them, by way of ornament,
and breast-plates of brass on their breasts, and on their arms they
carried a sort of screen, made of strong leather. One of them
carried a little brass figure of an eagle on a long pole, with a
scarlet flag flying below, and wherever the eagle was seen, they
all followed, and fought so bravely that nothing could long stand
against them.

When Julius Caesar rode at their head, with his keen, pale hook-nosed
face, and the scarlet cloak that the general always wore, they were so
proud of him, and so fond of him, that there was nothing they would
not do for him.

Julius Caesar heard that a little way off there was a country nobody
knew anything about, except that the people were very fierce and
savage, and that a sort of pearl was found in the shells of mussels
which lived in the rivers. He could not bear that there should be
any place that his own people, the Romans, did not know and subdue.
So he commanded the ships to be prepared, and he and his soldiers
embarked, watching the white cliffs on the other side of the sea