The History of France: Ancient Gaul

From the intro:"The country at the western extremity of Europe which is now named France was originally named in the language of its principal race, Gael-iachd, or the land of the Gaels, from which term the Greeks probably derived their Galatia and Kellika and the Romans their Gallia. It was defined by a remarkable series of natural boundaries-by two large oceans, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic by two lofty chains of mountains, the Alps and the Pyrenees and by the most beautiful river of Europe, the Rhine.Being in length and breadth nearly equal, about six hundred and fifty English miles in one direction, and five hundred and seventy in the other, it comprised an extent of territory larger by one fourth than that of modern France. Of the descriptive geography of this territory little was known to the ancients, whose random notices inform us that, for the most part, it was covered by forests and marshes. The sea-coasts north and west were the least inviting parts. In the peninsula which is now Brittany, the rough and frowning cliffs lent a gloomy grandeur to the scenery, but as these fell away at once into ranges of low sand-hills on one side, and into vast heaths and fens on the other, the aspect of the country became flat and monotonous. It was more picturesque on the Mediterranean shores, which were, however, exposed to fearful and desolating winds in the spring to the circus whose abrupt and choleric gusts shook down houses, and in the summer to the sultry auian laden with the miasms of Africa. But the beauties of the interior, described as presenting the happiest intermixture of high and low land, compensated for the defects that might be found elsewhere. The Alps on the east and the Pyrenees at the south, sending forth the great secondary spurs of Jura and the Yosges, of the Cevennes and the mountains of Auvergne, formed a series of magnificent valleys, through which many noble streams ran, with various beauty and in opposite courses, to the seas. The swift Ehone, gathered from the meltings of the Alps, and passing hurriedly through Lake Leman, shot southward to the Mediterranean; the Garonne, after breaking away from the unwooded slopes of the Pyrenees, was gradually swollen and propelled by the tributary waters of the Tarn, the Lot, and the Dordogne, till it broadened at last into a great arm of the Atlantic; farther inland, the Loire and the Seine turned their petulant currents to the same ocean; while the lordly Ehine, taking its departure from nearly the same mountain sources as the Ehone, reversed its direction, and roamed the wild borders of Germany in search of a wintry outlet to the northern gulfs."