1The geography and peoples of Britain, recorded by many writers, I shall describe not to compete with them in care or talent, but because it was then for the first time completely subdued. 1Thus what earlier writers, before the facts were ascertained, embellished with eloquence, will now be handed down with faithful accuracy. 2Britain, the largest of the islands that Roman knowledge embraces, stretches in extent and in latitude towards Germany on the east and towards Spain on the west, and on the south it is even within sight of the Gauls; 2its northern parts, with no lands opposite them, are beaten by a vast and open sea. 3Livy, the most eloquent of the older writers, and Fabius Rusticus, of the more recent, have likened the shape of Britain as a whole to an elongated lozenge or a double axe.
4And that is indeed its shape on this side of Caledonia, which is why the report has been applied to the whole: but those who go beyond find a vast and irregular tract of land jutting out at the very furthest shore, which tapers as if into a wedge. 5This coast of the remotest sea a Roman fleet then sailed round for the first time and established that Britain was an island, and at the same time discovered and subdued islands unknown until that time, which they call the Orcades. 6Thule too was glimpsed, since their orders went only so far, and winter was approaching. 6But they report that the sea is sluggish and heavy for rowers, and is not even raised by the winds as other seas are, I suppose because lands and mountains, the cause and material of storms, are rarer there, and the deep mass of unbroken sea is set in motion more slowly.
7To investigate the nature of the Ocean and its tides is not the business of this work, and many have recorded it: I would add one thing only, that nowhere does the sea hold wider sway, that it carries many currents this way and that, and does not rise and ebb only as far as the shore, but flows deep inland and winds around, and even works its way among ridges and mountains as if in its own domain.