Homeric warriors. After describing the position and bearings of the island—"Further," he continues, "they say that its original tribes inhabit Britain, in their usages still preserving the primitive modes of life; for in their war they use chariots, as the ancient Greek heroes are reported to have done in the Trojan war."
The people of the Cape of Cornwall are distinguished by the same author as "singularly partial to strangers; and, from their intercourse with foreign merchants, civilized in their habits." "These people," he continues, with reference to their traffic, "obtain the tin by skilfully working the soil which produces it. This, being rocky, has earthy interstices, in which working the ore, and then fusing, they reduce to metal, and when they have formed it into cubical shapes, they convey it to a certain island, lying off Britain, named Ictis; for at the low tides, the intervening space being laid dry, they carry thither in waggons
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The Land's End, Cornwall.—Drawn from nature and on wood, by J. S. Prout.
the tin in great abundance." But previous to that era this production, so valuable before the art of tempering iron was discovered, had attracted the Phœnicians to our shores. A history of early Britain would be incomplete without a fuller notice of the subject. This trade of the Phœnicians may be considered the beginning of that British commerce which has outlived its ancient teachers, extinguished every successive rivalry, and secured a main part of the wide world's traffic, in all its numberless departments, up to the present day.
It is now generally allowed, that what the Greeks termed chalcus, although translated brass, was not the metal commonly known under that name. It was rather that composition of copper and tin which we denominate bronze. It was with this bronze that the Greeks and Romans composed their statues, and many of their implements and ornaments; and of this also the Carthaginians, and even the early Homeric heroes, fashioned their swords and spears, as well as their defensive armour. Tin was likewise used, as is supposed, by the Tyrians, in introducing the rich purple dye for which they were famous, and was known to the Israelites, before the Babylonish captivity, under the name bedil. But going still further back, we find that brass (that is, bronze) was not only an important material in the construction of Solomon's temple, but a metal precious as gold, with which the Israelites, who must have obtained it from the Egyptians, adorned their tabernacle in the wilderness. In the former instance, we learn from the Sacred Writings that the artificer employed by Solomon in the decoration of the temple was Hiram, a native of Tyre, one of the cities of the Phœnicians, the early traders in tin. Here we trace the use of bronze up to the Mosaic period, and consequently of tin also, without which bronze cannot be made. And where was this tin obtained? At such early periods it was only to be found in two countries—Spain and Britain. These were, then, the valued sources from which the nations of earliest antiquity derived a metal that ministered so largely to their wealth, their luxury, and convenience. And these countries, perhaps, were that mysterious Tarshish, lying somewhere beyond the pillars of Hercules, from which such precious shipments returned, and whose locality our biblical commentators and able hydrographers have so long endeavoured to discover.
In such an important fact, it matters little whether the hidden treasures of Spain or of Britain had the honour of the first discovery. It is
