an island, there was no reason to change its insular appellation. In our navigations to the Pacific, newdiscovered places have been at first marked as islands, which were afterwards traced to be parts of a continent; and others have been deemed continental, which have been discovered to be insular !? MUCH of the false description with which the position of the Cassiterides has been confused, may have been designedly circulated by the Phenicians themselves. We know from Strabo, that they were anxious to deprive the rest of the world of any acquaintance with these islands. He has told us a very striking incident of this monopolizing solicitude, which must have been the parent of many misrepresentations about Britain, till the Romans subdued and examined it. He says, "Anciently the Phenicians alone, from Cadiz, engrossed this market; hiding the navigation from all others. When the Romans followed the course of a vessel, that they might discover the situation, the jealous pilot wilfully stranded his ship; misleading those, who were tracing him, to the same destruction. Escaping from the shipwreck, he was indemnified for his losses out of the public treasury." 10 When Cæsar invaded Britain, we know from his Commentaries, that he was unacquainted with its magnitude, its harbours, or its people. It was even 9 The reasons for supposing the Cassiterides to be the Scilly islands are thus stated in Camden's Britannia. They are opposite to the Artabri in Spain; they bend directly to the north from them; they lie in the same clime with Britain; they look towards Celtiberia; the sea is much broader between them and Spain, than between them and Britain; they lie just upon the Iberian sea; there are only ten of them of any note, and they have veins of tin which no other isle has in this tract. Camd. Brit. p. 1112. Ed. 1695. All these circumstances have been mentioned of the Cassiterides. 10 Strabo, lib. iii. p. 265. CHAP. III. BOOK I. doubted whether it was a continent or an island." Of course the Romans at that time could have known nothing of the connection and continuance of coast between Cornwall and Dover. This ignorance of other nations, and the designed misinformation given by the Phenicians, may have occasioned the distinction to have been taken between the Cassiterides and Britain, and a supposition, favoured by Strabo, that some sea intervened. 12 The Cassiterides had become imperfectly known to the Romans, in the time of Strabo, by the attempt of 13 Publius Crassus to discover them. He seems to have landed at one of them; but the short account given of his voyage does not incline us to believe that he completely explored them. 14 If we once presume that the Phenicians reached the Scilly islands, and extracted tin from them, we shall do great injustice to their memory to suppose 11 Dio Cass. lib. xxxix. p. 127. Cæsar. Comm. de Bell. Gall. lib. iv. s. 18. 12 Solinus says, that a turbid sea divided the Scilly isle (Siluram) from Britain, Polyhist. c. 22. p. 31. The distance is near forty miles. Whit. Manch. ii. p. 172. 8°. 13 Strabo, lib. iii. p. 265. Huet thinks this was not the Crassus who perished against the Parthians, though he had fought in Portugal and triumphed in Spain; but his son, who was Cæsar's lieutenant in his Gallic wars, and who subdued the people of Vannes and its vicinity. He may have undertaken the voyage from curiosity, as Volusenus, by Cæsar's orders, examined part of the sea coasts of our island for military purposes. Hist. de Com. des Anciens, c. 38. p. 183. ed. Par. 1727. 14 Whittaker's description of the present state of the Scilly islands is worth reading. Hist. Manch. ii. p. 169. Though the same chapter in other parts discovers a fancy painting far beyond the facts in its authorities. A writer in the Metropolitan Magazine, Jan. 1832, states the Scilly isles to be mere rocks, and that the currents make the navigation between them and the main land at all times dangerous. He adds, "We are of opinion that the present St. Michael's Mount is meant. At ebb tide it is accessible from the main. Tin is found there in two ways, in streamlets and mines." III. that they, who could sail from Tyre to the Scilly CHAP. islands, would not have adventured across the small sea between them and the Land's End. Indeed, the voyage of Himilco shows that the Carthaginians, the offspring of Tyre, pursued voyages even more northward than Britain. 15 We may therefore admit, without much chance of error, that the Cassiterides visited by the Phenicians were the British islands, though the Romans understood by the name the Islands of Scilly, with perhaps part of the coast of Cornwall. 16 ditions. HAVING thus stated the most authentic circum- Welsh tra stances that can be now collected, of the peopling of Britain by the Kimmerians, the Keltoi, and the Phenicians; it may not be improper to state, in one view, all that the Welsh traditions deliver of the ancient inhabitants of the island. As traditions of an ancient people committed to writing, they deserve to be preserved from absolute oblivion. 18 ACCORDING to the Welsh triads, while it was uninhabited by human colonies, and was full of bears, wolves, beavers, and a peculiar kind of wild cattle, it had the name of Clas Merddhin." In this state, Hy Cadarn led the first colony of the Cymry to it, of whom some went to Bretagne. It then acquired the name of the Honey Island. 19 In the course of time, Prydain, the son of Aedd the Great, reigned in it, and from him it was called Ynys Prydain, the Isle of Prydain 20; which is its present 15 Pliny, lib. ii. c. 67. 16 Pliny has preserved the name of the Phenician navigator who first procured lead from the Cassiterides. He says, Plumbum ex Cassiteride insula primus apportavit Midacritus. Hist. Nat. lib. vii. c. 57. 1. BOOK denomination in Welsh, and which the Greeks and Romans may have extended into Britannia. It was afterwards visited by two foreign tribes of Kimmerian origin, the Lloegrwys, from Gwasgwyn, or Gascony; and the Brython, from Llydaw, or Bretagne. Both of these were peaceable colonists. The Lloegrwys impressed their name upon a large portion of the island. At subsequent periods, other people came with more or less violence. The Romans22; the Gwyddyl Fficti (the Picts) to Alban or Scotland, on the part which lies nearest to the Baltic23; the Celyddon (Caledonians) to the north parts of the island; the Gwyddyl to other parts of Scotland24; the Corraniaid from Pwyll (perhaps Poland) to the Humber; the men of Galedin, or Flanders, to Wyth; the Saxons 26; and the Llychlynians, or Northmen. 27 Carthagi nians acquainted with Britain. As the prosperity of the Phenicians declined under the hostilities of the ancient conquerors, who emerged from Assyria, Babylon, and Persia, their descendants, the Carthaginians, succeeded to the possession of their European settlements; and in some places, as in Spain, and Scilly, greatly extended their territorial power. The Carthaginian occupation of Spain is fully attested to us by the Roman historians, and was distinguished by the wars in that country of the celebrated Carthaginian generals, Asdrubal and Hannibal. It was natural that when possessed of Spain, they should also acquire the more distant colonies of the Phenicians, and continue their commercial intercourse with the British islands, and the neighbouring shores. Hence, there is no reason to disbelieve the opinion, 23 Ib. 7. 24 Ib. 6. 25 Ib. 7. 21 Trioedd. 5. 22 Ib. 8. that the Carthaginians had the same intercourse 28 Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. ii. c. 67. On Bochart's derivation of Brettanike from Baratanac, the Land of Tin, mentioned in note 1 of this chapter, p. 51., it may be remarked, that these terms are rather conjectural as to the Hebrew: though barat, as he intimates, signifies a field in Syriac, and is twice used in that sense in the Chaldee of Daniel. But I have since found the two component words actually existing in the Arabic tongue, and placed as such in the Arabic Lexicon; for there I find 'bahrat' to mean 'a country' and 'anuk’ to signify tin and lead.' So that in Arabic bahrat-anuk literally express the Country of Tin,' which is the meaning of the Greek Kassiterides: and it is not more improbable that England should have been anciently called by its trading visitors, the Tin Country,' than that Molucca and the adjacent isles should be termed by our navigators 'the Spice Islands,' or that a part of Africa should be entitled, the Gold Coast,' and another part the Slave Coast;' seamen and merchants not unnaturally naming the distant land from the article for which they frequent it. CHAP. III. |