Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/487

] or Tin Islands, of the later writers, which from Strabo's account are probably the Scilly Islands, The name, however, may have included Cornwall and the tin districts of Wicklow in the south of Ireland, and it may also have been applied to those of Brittany. It is impossible that the early writers could have had accurate geographical knowledge of the various islands in so remote a sea. What little they knew they obtained from the narratives of sailors, unaccustomed to accurate observation, and unable to fix localities with the precision which is only rendered possible by the use of scientific instruments. Herodotus, writing in the year 450 B.C., with his valuable opportunities of collecting information, confesses his ignorance as to the position of the Cassiterides, whence the Phoœnicians, and afterwards the Greeks, obtained their tin. Aristotle, living B.C. 345, and with equal chances of obtaining accurate information, mentions Albion and Ierne as being the two chief British Isles beyond the Celtæ, and is the first author who uses these names. We may therefore consider that the British coasts were visited by Phœnician traders in the fifth or sixth centuries before Christ; that merchandise from the south was at that time used in barter for the various products of our island, and that afterwards the Greeks had tolerably accurate ideas of the British Isles.

It is very generally supposed that the chief Phœnician supply of tin was derived from Cornwall, principally from the assumed non-existence of other regions in Europe sufficiently rich in tin to have supplied the