British, when their name is first mentioned. This, however, is what might be expected, if the arrival of the Gaelic branch preceded, and eventually and gradually gave place to that later migration, the British Celts. CHAPTER III. PHOENICIANS-THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE BRITONS AND CALEDONIANS. Phoenicians in Britain the earliest and for many ages the only Traders from the East to Britain-Tarshish-Similarity of Phoenician and British objects of Worship-Baal and Ashtoreth-Bel or Bal in Phoenician and British Names-Funeral Wail of the Celts-Chariots of the Britons-Phoenicians prevent the knowledge of Britain and the route to it-The Celtic Maritime States of Gaul-The Fleet of the Veneti, and its superior mode of construction, probably the result of Phoenician influence-Temple of Saturn at Cadiz-Its Priests-Their Dress similar to that of the Druids-Phonician Monuments similar to the primitive Monuments of Britain-Superstitions in Sardinia, derived from the Phoenicians, similar to some in Britain-The Nuraghés of Sardinia, and Picts' Houses of Caledonia. A LTHOUGH the Celtic may not have been the first nor the exclusive race in Britain, they are the earliest known to history. But there are reasons for believing that the Phonicians under which name are here included their colonists in Africa and Europe, including Carthaginians and their colonies-may, to a limited extent, be an element in the early population of Britain, and in a more considerable degree have influenced the manners and customs of its Celtic inhabitants; also, that this was the result, not only of commercial intercourse, but that the Phoenicians mixed with the pre-occupants of the soil, and are an ingredient in British ancestry. This 1 would seem highly probable, even if there were no proofs in support of such a position. Niebuhr, in his Ethnology, remarks the striking facility with which the Phoenicians became amalgamated with foreign nations; and Turner, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, includes the Phoenicians along with the Kimmerians and Keltoi as the earliest inhabitants of Britain of whom any authentic circumstances can be collected.3 2 The Phoenicians were the earliest and for ages the only people who knew the route by sea from the confines of Asia to the western extremities of Europe. They alone, in the early dawn of history, and probably for ages before, braved the terrors, real and imaginary, that awaited the mariner who might venture to pass beyond the Pillars of Hercules; and according to Strabo, the Phoenicians possessed the better part of Africa, and were also settled in Spain before the age of Homer; and so continued until their dominion was finally overthrown by the Romans. It cannot be supposed that a maritime people of such preeminent enterprise as the Phoenicians, when they reached the sacred promontory, the westernmost point of Europe, would long remain ignorant of the contiguous coasts of Gaul, and the mineral wealth of the British Islands. We know it was not so; and that from these countries the Phoenicians supplied tin to the Greeks and other nations of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It has been suggested, from the |