In spite of the differences in language and manners which naturally were to be found within this wide territory, a close mutual intercourse, an innate sense of fellowship, seems to have knit together the tribes from the Rhone and Garonne to the Rhine and the Thames; whereas, although these doubtless were in a certain measure locally connected with the Celts in Spain and in the modern Austria, the mighty mountain barriers of the Pyrenees and the Alps on the one hand, and the encroachments of the Romans and the Germans which also operated here on the other, interrupted the intercourse and the intrinsic connection of the cognate peoples far otherwise than the narrow arm of the sea interrupted the relations of the continental and the British Celts.

Unhappily we are not permitted to trace stage by stage the history of the internal development of this remarkable people in these its chief seats; we must be content with presenting at least some outline of its historical culture and political condition, as it here meets us in the time of Caesar.
Population Agriculture and the Rearing of Cattle Gaul was, according to the reports of the ancients, comparatively well peopled.

Certain statements lead us to infer that in the Belgic districts there were some 200 persons to the square mile-- a proportion such as nearly holds at present for Wales and for Livonia--in the Helvetic canton about 245;( 11) it is probable that in the districts which were more cultivated than the Belgic and less mountainous than the Helvetian, as among the Bituriges, Arverni, Haedui, the number rose still higher.

Agriculture was no doubt practised in Gaul--for even the contemporaries of Caesar were surprised in the region of the Rhine by the custom of manuring with marl,( 12) and the primitive Celtic custom of preparing beer (-cervesia-) from barley is likewise an evidence of the early and wide diffusion of the culture of grain--but it was not held in estimation.

Even in the more civilized south it was reckoned not becoming for the free Celts to handle the plough.