(_To the Editor_.)


Allow me to make a few observations in addition to those in a paper signed
_G.K._ in No. 528 of _The Mirror_. Your correspondent commences with
Julius Caesar, and passes over the period intervening between him and King
Edgar; and from him till the time of King John. Now, prior to Caesar's
invasion of this island, and during the wars between the Romans and Gauls,
Caswallwn or Cassivelaunus, sent a numerous body of troops to assist the
Armoricans, or natives of Brittany, against the Romans; Caesar himself,
says, that his project of invading this country arose from the
intelligence he received of the aid the Gauls derived from the Britons;
therefore I consider that the mode, let it be what it would, deserved
somewhat of the name of a fleet, if not in the modern sense of the word.
Caesar says they had large, open vessels, with keels and masts made of
wood, and the other parts covered with hides; and about the year 384,
Cynan Meiriadog, a chieftain of North Wales, sailed to Armorica with a
great body of followers, to support the cause of Maximus, an aspirant to
the Roman throne.

Berkeley, in his _Naval History_, p. 49, says, that at the time of the
Saxon invasion, Gurthefyr or Vortimer, King of the Britons, with a fleet,
opposed the Saxons under Hengist; and after an obstinate engagement, the
Britons were victorious, notwithstanding the inferiority of their vessels
to those of the Saxons, both in number and size.

The Welsh, at the time of King Alfred, must have had some knowledge of
nautical architecture and affairs, (according to Berkeley's _Naval
History_, p. 69,) for the great Alfred discovering the necessity of