THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

First Period.-Celtic and Roman Britain.

CHAPTER I.

FIRST GLIMPSES OF BRITAIN.

Tin-The secret mines-Sparks of light-The secret discovered—

IN was the attraction which drew the first slender rills

TIN was the attraction w islands. Some stray Phenician

Τ

of civilization to our

sailors, not improbably from Gades (Cadiz) on the Iberian coast, beating aimlessly about among the Biscay waves, saw, perhaps through clearing mist, shifting glimpses of a distant coast. Having landed on the western part of this shore, they found themselves in a neighbourhood where tin was abundant. Tin was really a precious metal then. The Homeric warriors had fought with weapons of bronze; and for many centuries, until the art of tempering iron had reached some degree of forwardness, swords and spear-heads of mingled copper and tin continued to decide the battles of the ancient world. Temples, too, were adorned with bronze; statues and urns were moulded of it. Useful alike in peace and in war, tin was much sought, and well paid for. We can therefore understand the joy with

which the restless traders of Tyre and of Carthage would learn the secret of these distant islands and their mines, and the jealous caution with which they would conceal the approaches to the mysterious treasure-house. In this they were aided by nature. Girdled with an unknown sea, and curtained with treacherous gray mists, the Tin Islands long remained a shadowy name to the ancient world; and from all the wealth of classic literature before the day of Julius Cæsar, there can be gathered only two or three faint sparks of light to cast upon a mass of impenetrable darkness.

Herodotus, the father of Greek history, writing about 450 B.C., knew nothing of these lands but that they were islands, and that tin was found there. Calling them Cassiterides (Tin Islands), he wrote all he knew of them in a single Greek word. Somewhat more definite is the knowledge of Aristotle, the greatest of the Greek philosophers, who wrote about 350 B.C.; but the added information we get from his notice looks small indeed, when we remember that it took one hundred years to expand the vague word of Herodotus into the scanty statement: Beyond the Pillars of Hercules are two islands, which are very large, Albion and Ierne, called the Britannic,* which lie beyond the Celta." Here, for the first time in history, we

* Various derivations have been given for the word "Britain." There is no certainty in the matter, except that this is one of the oldest names of the island. We give a few of the conjectural etymologies. Of these, the fourth is now considered the most probable. 1. From Brutus, son of Ascanius the Trojan.-Chief authority, Geoffrey of Monmouth.

2. From Prydain, an ancient king.-Welsh Triads.

3. From Britin, a plural word meaning "separated," given by the people of Gaul to their island kindred.-Whitaker.

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4. From Brit daoine, the painted people; a name given by the Phoenician Gallic colony" to the natives who stained their skin.-Sir William Betham.

5. From Bruit, the Celtic for tin or metal, and tan, which has in many IndoEuropean tongues the meaning "land." Thus Bruit-tan would mean (like Cassiterides) Tin-land.-Pictorial History of England.

Albion, or Albin, the oldest name of Great Britain, is explained to be a Celtic word, meaning "white island," used by the Gauls in speaking of the chalk-rocked land they saw to the north. The words Albus and Alp probably contain the same root.

Ierne and Iernis are the Greek forms of Eire, a Celtic word (of which the genitive is Eirin, or Erin) meaning "the west or the extremity."

A certain western promontory of Africa, and another in Spain, bore the same name. Juvernia and Hibernia are formed from the same root.

have the number and the names of the islands which form the nucleus of our mighty empire.

Polybius, writing about 150 B.C., notices the Britannic Isles, coupling with his mention of them a special reference to the working of tin.

From the fragments of a geographical poem by Festus Avienus, who wrote in the fourth century, we gather a few facts about the voyage of an ancient mariner of Carthage, named Himilco. Sailing from his native city, in less than four months he reached some islands which he called the Estrymnides. These (perhaps the Scilly Isles)* abounded in tin and lead, but had no wood for ship-building, so that the inhabitants were forced to make boats out of hide.

The Phoenicians were not allowed to drive their profitable trade without many attempts to trace the course of their vessels. So keenly was the tin-hunt kept up on both sides, that once, when a Roman cruiser was chasing a Carthaginian ship, the captain of the latter had no way of keeping the secret but by running upon a reef, and taking with his sailors to a raft. At last the well-kept mystery oozed out. Pytheas, a Greek of Marseilles, is said to have penetrated the unknown sea at a very early date (about 320 B.C.). Others followed. The monopoly was broken; and a trade in tin sprang up between the hornshaped promontory of south-western Britain and the opposite shore of Gaul. Then, as we learn from Diodorus Siculus (8 B.C.), the metal was carried to an island "in front of Britain," named Ictis (probably St. Michael's Mount), and was there sold and shipped for Gaul, to be carried on pack-horses overland to Marseilles and Narbonne. The natural result of this commerce was to give a certain polish to those natives of Britain who met often with the merchants of the Continent. Grave, courteous bearded men they were said to be, carrying staves, and wearing

* St. Michael's Mount, near which submerged islets can be traced, has also been supposed to represent the Estrymnides.