nie Druidism in connection with Wiltshire. 
Phoenicians in the prophecies of Ezekiel, a.c. 590,! and Isaiah, a.c. 
700,? it is clear that the inhabitants of the two maritime cities of 
Tyre and Sidon, had been for ages distinguished as navigators and 
merchants, and were therefore quite competent to send forth co- 
lonies to the Northern European nations as well as to other countries, 
as Carthage and other maritime nations. In Ezekiel, the merchants 
of Tarshish (supposed by Betham to be the Western ocean and the 
countries situated upon it) are said to have traded at this “fair on 
account of the great variety of all kind of these riches, and brought — 
silver, iron, ¢in, and lead to this market:” and again, “ Pass ye over 
to Tarshish ; howl, ye inhabitants of the isle; is this your joyous — 
city, whose antiquity is of ancient days.” Now according to Sir W. 
Betham, tin exists not in any part of Europe but in Britain, there- 
fore that island must have been at least part of Tarshish, which 
signifies the Western ocean and the adjacent countries; and as 
Tarshish is also the name of a precious stone the Beryl (or Chryso- 
lite) mentioned in Exodus,’ and is not itself of Hebrew derivation 
or a Hebrew word, so the same writer conceives that it was obtained 
from the district whose name it bears, or some of the countries 
situated in Tarshish or the Western ocean, which would thus make 
these countries known to the Pheenicians, the only navigators of 
antiquity, at least 1500 years before the Christian era. And he 
adds, “it is worthy of remark that Cesar says the Britons had not 
only mines of silver, iron tin and lead, but that they imported brass,” 
with which metals according to Ezekiel, Tyre alone was supplied 
by the ships of Tarshish; that is, the vessels which were employed 
in trading to Ireland and Cornwall. We proceed now to the 
origin of the Phcenicians before they settled in Tyre and on the 
Syrian coasts. 
“The most learned Persians,” says Herodotus,’ “in the history 
of their country, attribute to the Phcenicians the cause of the en- 
mity between them and the Greeks. They say that being come 
from the neighbourhood of the Red Sea to the coast of (the Mediterra- 
nean) our sea, soon after they had established themselves in the country 
1 Ezekiel xxvii. and xxviii. 2Tsaiah xxiii. 8 Exodus xxvii. 29. 
4 Quoted by Sir W. Betham. 
