extensive belt of woodland skirted the sea-coast; reaching beyond the
mouths of the Rhine. Along the outer edge of this carrier, the dunes
cast up by the sea were prevented by the close tangle of thickets from
drifting further inward; and thus formed a breastwork which time and art
were to strengthen. The, groves of Haarlem and the Hague are relics of
this ancient forest. The Badahuenna wood, horrid with Druidic
sacrifices, extended along the eastern line of the vanished lake of
Flevo. The vast Hercynian forest, nine days' journey in breadth, closed
in the country on the German side, stretching from the banks of the Rhine
to the remote regions of the Dacians, in such vague immensity (says the
conqueror of the whole country) that no German, after traveling sixty
days, had ever reached, or even heard of; its commencement. On the
south, the famous groves of Ardennes, haunted by faun and satyr,
embowered the country, and separated it from Celtic Gaul.

Thus inundated by mighty rivers, quaking beneath the level of the ocean,
belted about by hirsute forests, this low land, nether land, hollow land,
or Holland, seemed hardly deserving the arms of the all-accomplished
Roman. Yet foreign tyranny, from the earliest ages, has coveted this
meagre territory as lustfully as it has sought to wrest from their native
possessors those lands with the fatal gift of beauty for their dower;
while the genius of liberty has inspired as noble a resistance to
oppression here as it ever aroused in Grecian or Italian breasts.



II.

It can never be satisfactorily ascertained who were the aboriginal
inhabitants. The record does not reach beyond Caesar's epoch, and he