Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/496

468 The second or eastern route, No. II. of map, runs by Trieste by way of Laibach, Gratz, and Bruck, and across the basin of the Leitha to Presburg, and from thence to the line of the Upper Oder, past Breslau, to the Lower Vistula, to Elbing, and ultimately reaches the amber coast of Samland.

These two lines of traffic were used not merely by the Etruskans, but also subsequently by the Romans, and are marked by the discovery of amber from the north, as well as articles derived from the south in the tombs in their neighbourhood, and by them the Mediterranean markets derived their principal supply of amber at the dawn of history. The ancient Greeks confounded the Hadriatic ports, whence the amber was shipped off to them, with the country where it was found, and Herodotus tells the story current in his time that a river Po flowed into the northern ocean not far from the Amber Isles, with the remark that his information was second hand, and that he had never seen any one who had visited those islands. The story is, however, true in its main points, that the amber of the ancient Greeks was discovered in northern Europe, and that it made its appearance in the civilised world at Hatria, near the mouth of the river Po, without reference to its conveyance through the country separating Italy from the North Sea and the Baltic, of which it was very unlikely that Herodotus could have obtained accurate information from the Greek traders.

The Etruskan trade passed also northwards through Switzerland into the Valley of the Rhine as far as its