Migration, While The State Of Life Was Unsettled, And There
Was Little Communication Of Intelligence Between Distant Places,
Was Among The Wilder Nations Of Europe, Capricious And Casual.
An
adventurous projector heard of a fertile coast unoccupied, and led
out a colony; a chief of renown for bravery, called the young men
together, and led them out to try what fortune would present.
When
Caesar was in Gaul, he found the Helvetians preparing to go they
knew not whither, and put a stop to their motions. They settled
again in their own country, where they were so far from wanting
room, that they had accumulated three years provision for their
march.
The religion of the North was military; if they could not find
enemies, it was their duty to make them: they travelled in quest
of danger, and willingly took the chance of Empire or Death. If
their troops were numerous, the countries from which they were
collected are of vast extent, and without much exuberance of people
great armies may be raised where every man is a soldier. But their
true numbers were never known. Those who were conquered by them
are their historians, and shame may have excited them to say, that
they were overwhelmed with multitudes. To count is a modern
practice, the ancient method was to guess; and when numbers are
guessed they are always magnified.
Thus England has for several years been filled with the
atchievements of seventy thousand Highlanders employed in America.
I have heard from an English officer, not much inclined to favour
them, that their behaviour deserved a very high degree of military
praise; but their number has been much exaggerated. One of the
ministers told me, that seventy thousand men could not have been
found in all the Highlands, and that more than twelve thousand
never took the field. Those that went to the American war, went to
destruction. Of the old Highland regiment, consisting of twelve
hundred, only seventy-six survived to see their country again.
The Gothick swarms have at least been multiplied with equal
liberality. That they bore no great proportion to the inhabitants,
in whose countries they settled, is plain from the paucity of
northern words now found in the provincial languages. Their
country was not deserted for want of room, because it was covered
with forests of vast extent; and the first effect of plenitude of
inhabitants is the destruction of wood. As the Europeans spread
over America the lands are gradually laid naked.
I would not be understood to say, that necessity had never any part
in their expeditions. A nation, whose agriculture is scanty or
unskilful, may be driven out by famine. A nation of hunters may
have exhausted their game. I only affirm that the northern regions
were not, when their irruptions subdued the Romans, overpeopled
with regard to their real extent of territory, and power of
fertility. In a country fully inhabited, however afterward laid
waste, evident marks will remain of its former populousness.
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