Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/111

 There can therefore be no doubt that gold was found in Britain although we are not told in what particular part. Gold is still found in Wales and in several parts of Scotland, although not in sufficient quantity to be worth working. Two observations remain to be made on the statements of Caesar and Strabo. Caesar tells us definitely that whilst they used copper as money, they had to import that metal. He omits all mention of silver, whilst Strabo, writing half-a-century later, speaks of it as a British product. I have remarked already that the silver coins of the Britons are all late, and exhibit as a rule Roman influence. It would therefore seem as if the working of silver had developed some time after Caesar's invasions. Thus once more we have an instance of gold in full use long before silver. But what is still more important, though the Britons are in the bronze period and are actually using copper money, they have to import that metal, although copper is actually found native in Cornwall. It still remained undiscovered in Strabo's time to judge by his silence, but as he is equally silent about tin, which was known long before, we cannot press the argument ex silentio. However, it is of great importance to find a people who possess gold and copper in a native state, already working the gold long before they have even discovered the copper. This is completely in harmony with what we have already seen in the case of the Scythians and Arabs of the Red Sea coasts. At a later stage we shall have to notice the rods or bars of iron used as currency by the Britons in connection with a similar practice elsewhere.

The writers of the classical age have left us no information respecting Ireland save that the people practised polyandry, and ate each other. Nevertheless there is abundant evidence to show that there were large deposits of gold on the east side of Ireland, in the Wicklow Mountains, and that the natives from a very early period wrought it into ornaments of various kinds. The vast quantity of gold ornaments to be seen in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy is a proof of its abundance.

We shall now return to Aquitania and the Bay of Biscay, from which we digressed to Britain, and coming into Northern