Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/40

38 place," says Pliny, "among all precious things, belongs to the pearl."

Another product of the British waters, which was highly prized by the luxurious Romans, was the oyster. From the manner in which the oysters of Britain are mentioned by Pliny, their sweetness seems to have been the quality for which they were especially esteemed. Juvenal speaks of them as gathered at Rutupiæ, now Richborough, near Sandwich. Pliny also mentions as among the greatest delicacies of Britain a sort of geese which he calls chenerotes, and describes as smaller than the wiser, or common goose.

Solinus celebrates the great store found in Britain of the stone called the gagates, in English the black amber, or jetstone. This mineral, as may be seen from Pliny, was held by the ancients to be endowed with a great variety of medical and magical virtues, Camden mentions it as found on the coast of Yorkshire. "It grows," he says, "upon the rocks, within a chink or cliff of them; and before it is polished looks reddish and rusty, but after, is really (as Solinus describes it) diamond-like, black, and shining." "Certain it is," says Harrison, "that even to this day there is some plenty to be had of this commodity in Derbyshire and about Berwick, whereof rings, salts, small cups, and sundry trifling toys are made; although in many men's opinions nothing so fine as that which is brought over by merchants daily from the main." Marbodaeus, however, gives the preference to the jets of Britain over those of all other countries.

The inhabitants of Britain under the Roman government no doubt carried on traffic with the other parts of the empire in ships of their own; and the province must be supposed to have possessed a considerable mercantile as well as military navy. It is of the latter only, however, that the scanty history of the island we have during the Roman domination has preserved any mention.