2. There were no great cities, no fine buildings, no pleasant gardens, parks, or nice roads to go from one place to another; but the people lived in caves, or in the woods, in clusters of huts, which they called towns.
3. The country was not then called England, but Britain; and its inhabitants were called Britons. They were divided into many tribes; and each tribe had a king or chief, like the North American Indians; and these chiefs often went to war with one another.
4. Some of the tribes lived like savages, for they had no clothes but skins, and did not know how to cultivate the land: so they had no bread, but got food to eat by hunting animals in the forests, fishing in the rivers, and some of them by keeping herds of small hardy cattle, and gathering wild roots and acorns, which they roasted and eat.
5. But all the Britons were not equally uncivilized, for those who dwelt on the south coasts of the island, had learned many useful things from the Gauls, a people then living in the country now called France, who used to come over to trade with them, and with many families of Gauls who had at various times settled amongst them.
6. They grew corn, brewed ale, made butter and cheese, and a coarse woollen cloth for their clothing. And they knew how to dye the wool of several colors, for they wore plaid trowsers and tunics, and dark colored woollen mantles, in shape like a large open shawl.
7. Perhaps you would like to know what they had to sell to the Gauls; so I will tell you. Britain was famous for large dogs; and there was plenty of tin; and the South Britons sold also corn and cattle, and the prisoners which had been taken in war, who were bought for slaves; and you will be sorry to hear that many of the ancient Britons sold their children into slavery.
8. They carried these goods in carts, drawn by oxen, to the coast of Hampshire, then crossed over to the Isle of Wight, in light boats, made of wicker, and covered with hides or skins, in shape something like half a walnut shell.
9. The merchants from Gaul met them in the Isle of Wight; and as they brought different kinds of merchandise to dispose of, they managed their business almost entirely without money, by exchanging one thing for another.
10. The Britons were very clever in making things of wicker work, in the form of baskets, shields, coated with hides, boats, and chariots, with flat wooden wheels.