no 



carried on commerce with the inhabitants of North Wales, has 

 been suggested by an author who is not very favourable to the 

 idea of the early civilization of Ireland ;* and the suggestion is 

 strongly supported by the circumstance, that an ancient road in 

 England, which reached from Sandwich to Caernarvon, was called 

 by the Romans Guetheling or Watling Street. Now this name, 

 in this as in other instances, was derived from that of the people 

 towards whom it was directed ; and these were the Guetheli or 

 Gatheli of Ireland. — Hence Dr. Whitaker argues that the ancient 

 Britons had roads and commercial intercoui'se before the settling of 

 the Romans, who, being ignorant of the Guetheli, must have 

 adopted the name which they found in common use among the 

 British.-f- 



Foreign commerce too, appears to have been early pursued, 

 since Tacitus distinctly says that the " ports and landing places of 

 Hibernia were better known than those of Britain, through the 

 frequency of commerce and merchants.":{: The likelihood of this 

 trade having extended chiefly eastwards, is very great ; since 

 Ireland is mentioned in so distinct a manner by some of the oldest 

 Greek authors,§ as scarcely to admit a doubt of her having been 

 well known to the navigators of those times, the Phenicians, who 

 were the carriers and merchants of the world — and through them 

 to the Greeks.f What could the Phenicians resort here for, but 



* Wood on the Primitive Inhabitants of Ireland, p. 96 — 99. 



f Whitaker's History of Manchester, I. p. 68. 



:{: Vitae Agricola, C. 24. 



§ Orpheus, Homer, Plutarch, Strabo, Aristotle : see at large in Sir E. Parson's Defence of 

 the Ancient History of Ireland, pp.80, 95, 97, 119. By Dio. Sic. see Phil. Survey of the 

 South of Ireland, p. iiS. 



ir Ibid. p. 112. 



