The Phoenicians, and their colonists settled in Africa and the south of Spain, appear to have retained for a long period the exclusive possession of the trade with the British islands, even the situation of which they contrived to keep concealed from all other nations. It appears from Herodotus, that, in his time, about four centuries and a half before the birth of Christ, although his countrymen knew that tin came from certain islands which, on that account, went by the name of the Cassiterides, or Tin Isles, yet all that was known of their situation was, that they lay somewhere in the north or north-west of Europe. It is generally supposed that the first Greek navigator who penetrated into the seas in this part of the world was Pytheas of Marseilles, who appears to have flourished about a hundred years after the time of Herodotus. From this celebrated colony of Marseilles something of the Greek civilization seems early to have radiated to a considerable distance over the surrounding regions; but whether there ever was any direct intercourse between Marseilles and Britain we are not informed. The only accounts of the trade which have come down to us, represent it as carried on through the medium of certain ports on the coast of Gaul nearest to our island; and we are probably to understand that the ships and traders belonged, not to Marseilles, but to these native Gallic towns. From the north-west coast of Gaul, the tin and lead seem to have been for a long time transported across the country to Marseilles by land carriage.
Strabo relates, on the authority of Polybius, that, when Scipio Africanus the younger made inquiry respecting the tin islands of the people of Marseilles, they professed to be totally ignorant of where they lay. From this we must infer, either that the Massilians had adopted the policy of the Carthaginians with regard to the navigation to these isles, and studiously concealed what they knew of them, or, what is more probable, that they really knew
Institutes of Menn, however, hardly deserve this formal announcement ; and the essay, altogether, is, like everything else of this author's, a very flimsy performance.
