PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 131 



aAd two commercial factories in the Persian Gulf* (the Ba- 

 harian islands, Tylos and Aradus). 



The amber trade, which was probably directed first to the 

 west Cimbrian shores,! and subsequently to the land of the 



nature, were still carried on iu the granitic mountains (see my Rel. Hist., 

 t. i., p. 51 and 53). The occurrence of tin is of some geognostic im- 

 portance, on account of the former connection of Galicia, the peninsula 

 of Brittany, and Cornwall. 



* Etienne Quatremere, op. cit., p. 363-370. 



t The opinion early expressed (see Heinzen's Neue Kielisches Maga- 

 zin, th. ii., 1787, s. 339; Spreugel, Gesch. der Geogr. Entdeckungen, 

 1792, s. 51; Voss, Krit. Blatter, bd. ii., s. 392-403) that amber was 

 brought by sea at first only from the west Cimbrian coast, and that it 

 reached the Mediterranean chiefly by land, being brought across the in- 

 tervening countries by means of inland barter, continues to gain in va- 

 lidity. The most thorough and acute investigation of this subject is 

 contained in Ukert's memoir Ueber das Elcctrum, iu Die Zcitschrift fur 

 Alterthumswissenschaft, Jahr 1838, No. 52-55, s. 425-452. (Compare 

 with it the same author's Geographic der Griechen und Homer, th. ii., 

 abth. 2, 1832, s. 25-36; th. iii., i., 1843, s. 86, 175, 182, 320, und 349.) 

 The Massiliaus, who, under Pytheas, advanced, according to Heeren, 

 after the Phoenicians, as far as the Baltic, hardly penetrated beyond the 

 mouths of the Weser and the Elbe. Pliny (iv., 16) placed the amber 

 islands (Gle.ssaria, also called Austrania) decidedly west of the Cim- 

 brian promontory, in the German Sea; and the connection with the ex- 

 pedition of Germauicus sufficiently teaches us that the island signified 

 is not in the Baltic. The great effect of the ebb and flood tides in the 

 estuaries which throw up amber, where, according to the expression of 

 Servius, " mare vicissim turn accedit, turn recedit," applies to the coasts 

 between the Helder and the Cimbrian Peninsula, but not to the Baltic, 

 in which the island of Baltia is placed by Timaeus (Plin., xxxvii., 2). 

 Abalus, a day's journey from an ajstuariurn, can not, therefore, be the 

 Kurish Nehrung. See, also, on the voyage of Pytheas to the west shores 

 of Jutland, and on the amber trade along the whole coast of Skage as 

 far as the Netherlands, Werlauff, Bidrag til den Nordiske Ravhandels 

 Historic (Kopenh., 1835). In Tacitus, and not in Pliny, we find the 

 first acquaintance with the glessum of the shores of the Baltic, in the 

 land of the jEstui (^Estnorum gentium) and of the Venedi, concerning 

 whom the great philologist ShatFarik (Slawische Alterthumer, th. i., s. 

 151-165) is uncertain whether they were Slaves or Germani. The 

 more active direct connection with the Samland coast of the Baltic, and 

 with the Esthoniaus, by means of the over-land route through Pannonia, 

 by Carnuntum, which was first followed by a Roman knight under Nero, 

 appears to me to have belonged to the later times of the Roman Cinsars 

 (Voigt, Gesch. Preussen's, bd. i., s. 85). The relations between the 

 Prussian coasts and the Greek colonies on the Black Sea are proved 

 by fine coins, struck probably before the eighty-fifth Olympiad, %vhich 

 have been recently found in the Netz district (Lewezow, in the Ab- 

 handl. der Berl. Akad. der Wiss. aus dem Jahr 1833, s. 181-224). The 

 electron, the sun-stone of the very ancient mythus of the Eridanus (Plin.. 

 xxxvii., cap. 2), the amber stranded or buried on the coast, was, no doubt, 

 frequently brought to the south, both by land and by sea, from very 

 different districts. The " amber which was found buried at two places 



