Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/486

458 Cape (Finisterre) Nerium, where a chain of lofty mountains, formerly called Œstrymnis, rises perpendicularly from the sea. Thence he crossed the Bay of Biscay, and arrived at the islands of the Œstrymnides, "rich in tin and lead, and inhabited by a numerous, proud, and industrious population accustomed to commerce, and in the habit of going to sea in poor leathern boats (coracles). Thence he sailed two days farther to grass-green Insula Sacra (Ireland), inhabited by the races of the Hibernians." These seas were visited by the sailors of Carthage and of Gades, who were in the habit of carrying on a trade with the natives. The voyage back from the Œstrymnides is described as follows:—"He who dares to steer from them into the open sea with a north wind lands on the green shore of the Ligurians," which may reasonably be taken to be the lower district of the Loire (Ligeris), or that district from which in later times intercourse was maintained between Cornwall and Massilia. From this place the Œstrymnian Bay reaches as far as Ophiusa, the coast of which has the same extent as that of the Peloponnese, and from which it is a journey of seven days on foot to the Mediterranean or Sardinian Sea.

It is obvious, from this confused account, that we possess merely imperfect fragments of the records of the voyage. But even these prove that the Phœnicians were in the habit of trading with the natives of north- western Europe, as early as B.C. 500, and that they penetrated as far as the British and Irish Seas. The Œstrymnides are probably the same as the Cassiterides,