SO it was that Brutus and his followers set sail in three hundred and twenty-four ships in quest of a kingdom. The first landfall they made was on an island ravaged by pirates, where there was however a ruined Temple of Diana. Brutus himself led the rites, before lying down to sleep by the altar; and in his sleep he saw a vision of the goddess, who urged to him look beyond the land of the Gauls to an island where he might establish a second Troy.
It was only after many months and many adventures (they were almost wrecked by the Sirens, and were forced into a desperate defence of their camp in Aquitaine) that they stumbled upon the Island of Albion,* and knew it for the land promised by Diana. They landed at Totnes, and at once Brutus divided the island with his trusty friend Corineus, from whom the Cornish take their name. But the island was named Britain after Brutus; and they slew the giants who inhabited it, and took possession of it, founding the city of Trinovantum or New Troy upon the Thames.*
* This becomes of course London, as Geoffrey proceeds to explain at some length.
* The name ‘Albion’ for Great Britain can be traced back to seamen from Massilia (modern Marseilles) in about 525 BC. The Romans called the province Britannia after the name current among the Celts, but kept up the name Albion too and referred it to the White (Latin: alba) Cliffs of Dover. According to Virgil and Livy, the royal house of Brutus’s uncle Sylvius Aeneas was the House of Alba, and Aeneas’s son Ascanius founded the city of Alba Longa near Rome. Alba was also the name of a Scottish kingdom formed by the union of the Picts and Scots under Kenneth I MacAlpin, King of Alba, in 843. After Duncan I united Alba with Strathclyde, Cumbria and Lothian in 1034, the name faded away and in 1094 Duncan II was styled ‘King of Scots’.