Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/98

92 developed this trade. The ore lay near the surface. The distance by sea was greater than that across the English Channel, but the readiness with which the tin was obtained, combined with the shorter land transit, more than compensated this. Strabo is evidently contrasting the rival tin-producing regions when he introduces the allusion to Britain, and it is equally certain that the two distances by sea which he has in mind are measured from the coast of Gaul. In the case of Britain there can be no doubt at all respecting the region from which the sea divides it, and he of course is estimating the extent of the sea which divides the tin island from land by referring to France likewise.

To refer this to the extent of sea round by the Pillars of Herakles is impossible, for the Romans already knew that route, and at the same time it would be absurd to compare in any wise so long a voyage with the short extent of sea separating Britain from the Continent. The right interpretation of this passage has some very important results. In the first place it explains why, when Strabo was writing, tin is no longer mentioned among the exports from Britain. The new development of the Spanish mines has evidently driven the British tin out of the market, as in recent times the fresh development of the most ancient source of tin, the famous mines of Malacca, the Kastira of the ancients, has once more driven Cornish tin out of the markets of the world.

From this achievement of Crassus and its results we can now understand in its proper light the famous expression of Pytheas, that “the northern parts of Iberia are more accessible towards Keltiké than for those who sail by the ocean”. We saw above that at this time the Carthaginians had shut out the Greeks from all trade in the west of the Mediterranean. The Massaliotes had sought, about the beginning of the fourth century B.C., to make up for their losses on the coasts of Southern Spain by planting the strong colony of Emporiæ near the foot of the Pyrenees in the hopes of still keeping some share in the mineral