The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



in the Bath Museum. We are thus enabled to connect Leap 

 with the famous passage of the Greek historian. 



Sir George Lewis's theory has, too, been singularly corro- 

 borated in other directions, especially by the large quantities of 

 bronze ornaments found during the excavations in the Swiss 

 Lakes, 1853 and 1854, the metals of which could only have 

 been brought there by an overland route. 



Further, too, we must not reject the account of Diodorus, 

 because he says that at low tide the tin was carried over in 

 carts. "We must remember the extremely indefinite views of 

 the ancients on all geographical subjects. The vaguest ideas 

 were held, especially about Britain. Erring in a different 

 direction, the mistake is not so bad as Pliny's, in making the 

 Island six days' sail from England. There seems, however, a 

 most natural explanation, that Diodorus, not having been there, 

 took for granted the wild traditions and rumours which reached 

 him, and which, even in these days, with only the slightest 

 possible variation of form, still hold their ground with the 

 Forest peasantry, in the legend that the stone of which Beau- 

 lieu Abbey is built was brought over the dry bed of the Solent, 

 in carts, from the Binstead Quarries. 



Still the passage is not without the further difficulty, that 

 Diodorus seems, from the context, to have supposed that the 

 Island was situated close to where the tin was dug. This, again, 

 must be set down to that ignorance of geography, which has 

 involved all Greek writers in such extraordinary mistakes. 



Leap itself is now nothing but a village, with a scattered 

 agricultural population ; some few, however, maintaining them- 

 selves by fishing in the summer, and in the winter by shooting 

 the ducks and geese which flock to the creeks and harbours of 

 the Solent. Leaving it, and still keeping westward, we come 



58 



