Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/29

Rh his time, this latter metal was found in Britain in great plenty lying thus exposed or scarcely covered.

There is reason to believe that some knowledge of the art of working in metals was possessed by the Britons before the Roman invasion. Moulds for spear, arrow, and axe heads have been frequently found both in Britain and Ireland; and the discovery in 1735, on Easterly Moor, near York, of 100 axe-heads, with several lumps of metal and a quantity of cinders, may be considered sufficient testimony that at least the bronze imported into Britain was cast into shapes by the inhabitants themselves. The metal of which the British weapons and tools were made has been chemically analyzed in modern limes, and the proportions appear to be, in a spear-head, one part of tin to six of copper; in an axe-head, one of tin and ten of copper; and in a knife, one of tin to seven and a half of copper. Whatever knowledge the Gauls possessed of the art of fabricating and dyeing cloth, the more civilized inhabitants of the South of Britain, having come originally from Gaul, and always keeping up a close intercourse with the people of that country, may be fairly presumed to have shared with them. The long dark-coloured mantles, in which Strabo describes the inhabitants of the Cassiterides as attired, may indeed have been of skins, but were more probably of some woollen texture. The Gauls are stated by various ancient authors to have both woven and dyed wool; and Pliny mentions a kind of felt which they made merely by pressure, which was so hard and strong, especially when vinegar was used in its manufacture, that it would resist the blow of a sword. Cæsar tells us that the ships of the Veneti of Gaul, notwithstanding their superior strength and size, had only skins for sails; and he expresses a doubt as to whether that material was not employed either from the want of