It is, however, certain, that the Saxon nation believed themselves the descendants of those conquerors: and they had as good a title to that descent as any other of the Northern tribes; for they used the same language which then was and is still spoken, with small variation of the dialects, in all the countries which extend from the polar circle to the Danube.

This people most probably derived their name, as well as their origin, from, the Sacae, a nation of the Asiatic Scythia.

At the time of which we write they had seated themselves in the Cimbric Chersonesus, or Jutland, in the countries of Holstein and Sleswick, and thence extended along the Elbe and Weser to the coast of the German Ocean, as far as the mouths of the Rhine.

In that tract they lived in a sort of loose military commonwealth of the ordinary German model, under several leaders, the most eminent of whom was Hengist, descended from Odin, the great conductor of the Asiatic colonies.

It was to this chief that the Britons applied themselves.