fice over the spot where the city of Ys is believed to have stood. Probably in Europe these were the last ceremonies offered for heathen ancestors, and the most marked continuance of rites commenced under a heathen priesthood. It will be seen from this detail that there is not only the country of Lionais, but also that of Cornwall, as ancient divisions of Brittany. In the former the site of King Arthur's palace is pointed out, also the island of Aiguilon, where they say he was buried, and the site of the castle of Launcelot-du-lac and La Blonde Yseult on the banks of the Elorn. In the next Celtic division to Cornwall, in the Morbihan, is shown the forest of Brocelinde, where Merlin "drees his weird;" and there also is the consecrated fountain of Balanton, which is still believed to possess miraculous properties. There also may be found Caradoc and Madoc, and other names familiar to the ancient legends of British history.

The mention of the Iernian Isles in the Argonautica, like the quotation from Hecatæus, may be received as confirmatory of a vague knowledge possessed by the Greeks in the fourth and sixth centuries B.C. regarding the British Islands. That this knowledge was derived through, and purposely mystified by the Phoenicians, we may be assured, as we have evidence of the extreme jealousy with which they regarded, and the success with which they baffled all attempts to discover the route to the islands whence they procured an abundant supply of tin.2 This jealousy is evident in the treaty concluded

1

1 Souvestre, Derniers Bretons, vol. i. pp. 36, 37. Paris, 1854.

2 Mon. Hist. Brit. p. 5.

1

between the Romans and Carthaginians in the middle of the fourth century B.C.1 By it the Romans bound themselves not to extend their voyages to the west beyond Tarseius.

Herodotus, in the fifth century B.C., admits that he knew nothing of the Cassiterides; but the same paragraph contains the important addition, "from which we get tin."

2

A century later, viz., in the middle of the fourth century, all we can learn from Aristotle is, that he knew that the Britannic Isles were in the ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules; that the two largest were called Albion and Ierne; and that these islands lay beyond the Celts.

Polybius, in the second century B.C., mentions the Britannic Isles and the preparation of tin, but does not return to the subject in any of his works which have been preserved. Hitherto the traffic from Britain to the Mediterranean seems to have been monopolised by the Phoenicians, but in the first or possibly in the second century B.C., Publius Crassus made known to the Romans the route by sea from the Pillars of Hercules to the tin islands.

In the first century B.C. we have the Roman invasion and Britain described by Cæsar, and also the statement of Strabo and Diodorus Siculus regarding the island and its export of tin.

3

Tin appears to have been well known and common in the time of Moses. And it may be inferred that it was brought into Palestine from the west, as it is not mentioned amongst

1 Polybius, b. iii.

2 Mon. Hist. Brit. P. 1.

3 Numbers xxxi. 22, 49.

2

the articles imported by the fleets of Solomon to the port of Ezion-Geber on the Red Sea. Moreover, it is mentioned as being brought to the Phoenician harbours from Tarshish.1 Tarseius, or Tartessus, was a name of various Phoenician settlements in Andalusia; and from their colonies in that part of Spain it is known that the Phoenicians derived their principal mineral wealth. There seems, however, to be good reason for believing that the mines of Spain were insufficient for the supply of Eastern Europe and Western Asia with a metal so necessary as tin-required as an alloy for the copper, which in early ages was used for the manufacture of most domestic vessels, as well as in all armour for defence and warlike weapons--and that from the British Isles a great part of the tin was supplied to the Greeks at a much earlier period, as we see it was in the time of Herodotus; contributing to make tin an article of no rarity even in the days of Homer.

1 Ezekiel xxvii. 12.

2 The importance of Tarseius, Tarshish, to the Phoenicians, to Tyre, is particularly shown in the 23d ch. of Isaiah, where Tyre is even called the "daughter of Tarshish."

It must have been at a very early period that mining implements of holly, box, and hartshorn were used in the ancient tin-works of Cornwall, where they have been commonly

3

found; and such tools Norden, in his Survey of Cornwall in 1584, truly and quaintly calls weak pickaxes for such obdurate materials. And in Carew's Survey of Cornwall he mentions as found in old mines "tool-heads of brass called thunderaxes," which, he says, "make small show of any profitable use."

Eratosthenes mentions the Hesperides, whence tin proceeds.

CHAPTER II.

ETHNOLOGY OF CALEDONIA.

Early Migrations-The Gypsies-Islands of the Blessed-Ancient Celtic Traditions Early Celtic Inhabitants—Albannaich-Aborigines-Gaels and Britons-Belgae-Gaels the Earliest Inhabitants in the Historical Period -Celtic Words, Inver and Aber-Sliabh and Ben-Llan, Pen, and KenBal and Ard-The four Pictish Words-Albannaich and Cruithne-Dalriad Scots of Caledonia-Picts of Ireland-Mass of the Early Population of Caledonia Celtic.

IF

F the principal inhabitants of Britain and Western Europe came from the East, history gives no direct information. of their migration, nor of the continued but irregular flow, when wave succeeded wave in the human tide that bore the ancestors of European nations to the regions of their destiny. It is, however, easy to comprehend with how little reluctance nomad tribes, accustomed to continual change of place for themselves and pasturage for their flocks, would pass beyond conventional limits; and that rivers, mountains, and narrow seas would be insufficient to restrain multitudes allured by the ambition of leaders, or impelled by the terrors of pestilence and famine to leave the haunts of their youth and the graves of their ancestors.

If permitted to judge of unrecorded ages by events that

have occurred at a later period and are preserved in history, it may be presumed that the lust of conquest and religious intolerance were great impelling causes of the original expatriation and onward movement of various races. Conquerors, perhaps styled Great by their flatterers, and fanatics, deemed Saints by their followers, have often caused the greatest calamities to their fellow-men, and were probably amongst the most efficient causes of the earliest, as well as of the latest, migration from the East into Europe, viz., that of the race usually called Gypsies. There were Gypsies-or a scattered race. nearly answering the description of that unsettled people—in various parts of Central Asia at a very early period. But I allude to the horde, more numerous then than others that are nations now, that crossed into Europe in the early part of the fifteenth century. In them we see accomplished, at a comparatively recent period, the progress of a very large body of inhabitants of Hindostan from that land of the sun to the cloudy extremities of Western Europe. The lot of the Gypsies has been a hard one, even in Britain. "Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast," the wonder is that they have survived and still remain a separate race, notwithstanding savage proscriptions, continued evil treatment, and neverceasing hardships. Does not their remaining under such circumstances suggest the idea of an instinctive law which has ever prevented the uncivilised races of mankind from turning back on the path over which they were pressed onwards to the West? And as regards the subject we are now considering, such a peculiarity in our constitution might in some measure