Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/15

Rh mentions their mines both of tin and lead, and these metals, he adds, along with skins, they give to the foreign merchants who resort to them in exchange for earthenware, salt, and articles of bronze.

We may here observe that the geographer Dionysius Periegetes gives the name of the Isles of the Hesperides to the native country of tin, and says that these isles, which he seems to place in the neighbourhood of Britain, are inhabited by the wealthy descendants of the famous Iberians. It is remarkable that Diodorus Siculus describes the Celtiberians, or Celts of Spain, as clothed in black and shaggy cloaks, made of a wool resembling the hair of goats, thus using almost the same terms which Strabo employs to describe the dress of the people of the Cassiterides. The chief island of the Scilly group is called Silura by Solinus ; and perhaps the original occupants of these isles were the same Silures who are stated to have afterwards inhabited South Wales, and whose personal appearance Tacitus has expressly noted as betokening a Spanish origin.

It was undoubtedly through the extended commercial connexions of the Phoenicians that the metallic products of Britain were first distributed over the civilized world. A regular market appears to have been found for them by these enterprising traffickers in some of the most remote parts of the earth. Both Pliny and Arrian have recorded their exportation to India, where the former writer says they were wont to be exchanged for precious stones and pearls. It is probable that this commerce was at one time carried on, in part at least, through the medium of the more ancient Palmyra, or Tadmor of the Desert, as it was then called, which is said to have been founded by Solomon a thousand years before our era.