GEOGRAPHY AND ANTIQUITY. ;{l.j 



producing it, which have reference to the question under consideration 

 are England, the Malayan IVninsnla, and Northern ( Miiua. The ore 

 is easily reduced, and in early times was (omul in drift or alluvium. 

 The tin formations ol the Malayan countries are the most extensive; in 

 the world. These three sources are the only principal ones from which 

 the nations of ancient Europe could have derived this metal. Tin 

 would be supplied in the same manner as silk and spices, Avith the 

 difference of being^ imported from the West as well as the East. 

 Merchants dealing in the metal would convey it, as far as it fetched a 

 profit, until western and eastern tin met at a central point, which 

 may have been Egypt. All the nations west of it would be supplied 

 with British, and all those east of it with Malayan or Chinese tin. 

 British tin would be conveyed by land to the Channel, then, crossing 

 it, reach France, and through France find its way to Italy, Greece, 

 and Egypt. The author totally disbelieves, with Sir Cornwall Lewis, 

 in the voyages of the Phoenicians to the Scilly Islands, through which 

 they are imagined to have supplied the eastern world with Cornish 

 tin. The voyage from the entrance of the Mediterranean would be 

 1,000 miles in a straight line over a stormy ocean ; a voyage very un- 

 likely to be performed by ancient mariners, who, we know, even in 

 the Mediterranean, only crept along the coasts, hauling their craft 

 ashore in foul weather. Besides, the Scilly Islands, the supposed 

 Cassitorides, afford no evidence of having ever produced tin. There 

 is no evidence that either the Greeks or the Phoenicians ever passed 

 the Straits of Gibraltar. 



Sir C. Lyell had always wondered whence the ancients had ob- 

 tained their supply of tin for the bronze articles which they manufac- 

 tured in so great abundance. We have helmets and weapons of un- 

 questionable antiquity which have just that proportion of tin and 

 copper which is known to be the best for the purpose. Sir Henry 

 James had recently found in the bed of the harbor of Falmouth, an 

 ancient wrecked ingot of tin, which was of precisely that shape and 

 weight which would adapt it as half-cargo for a horse, balanced by 

 a similar ingot on the other side. The metal was thus conveyed 

 along our southern coast to a favorable place for embarkation, whence 

 the cargoes crossed the Channel and were taken overland through 

 Gaul to the Mediterranean. The letis of Diodorus Siculus was St. 

 Michael's Mount, which even now is an island at high water. There 

 are not wanting geological signs of the great antiquity of some of the 

 tin-works of Cornwall, for some of them are covered by marine de- 

 posits in such a manner as to show that since the time when tin was 

 extracted, there had been a submergence and a subsequent re-elevation 

 of the land. In those ancient times Gaul was peopled by savage 

 tribes, and he thought it much more likely the Phoenicians then came 

 round by sea for their cargoes of tin, than that Gaul was then suffi- 

 ciently safe to be a highway for trade. Sir II. James described the 

 ingot which he had discovered at Falmouth, and which is now in the 

 Museum of Truro. It resembled in form an astragalus or knuckle- 

 bone, the shape being convenient for slinging over the back of a 

 horse, and it was important to notice that Diodorus Siculus used the 

 term astragali in describing the shape of the tin-blocks brought from 

 the Island of letis, which there could be no doubt was the same as St. 



