194 THE BRIGANTES. 



more or less melted into the original language, so that in Bri- 

 tain different men, as the Silures and Caledonii, spoke the same 

 British, and the Celtic settlers and Belgian invaders of Gallia 

 employed the same Gallic tongue, while the same races of men, 

 on the opposite sides of the Rhine or the sea, required then and 

 require now the aid of interpreters. 



For five centuries before the birth of Christ, the British islands 

 were known to the more adventurous of the voyagers from the 

 Mediterranean, and the coasts of Spain, Gaul, and Germany. 

 The Cassiterides or ' tin islands ' had reached the ears of the 

 cautious Father of Grecian History* (B.C. 450). Perhaps even 

 then beads, obtained from the Electrides, or f amber islands/ were 

 sold not only to the neighbouring Teutonsf, but transported 

 in the keels of the Northmen to adorn the ladies of Britain. 

 Pytheas could not have been the first voyager from MassiliaJ, 

 whose keel ploughed the sluggish waves of the northern ocean ; 

 but if he touched (after six days' sail northward from Britain) 

 the shore of Iceland in the long days of summer, when the 

 sun did not set ; if he landed in Britain and (however rudely) 

 estimated its circumference; if he, in a second voyage, ex- 

 plored the Baltic coast of the fossil amber || ; this Phocsean 

 navigator must be regarded as worthy of the age of Aristotle 

 and Alexander (4th century B.C.), and no mean specimen of an 

 archaic voyager to the North. 



Centuries glide away. Gades, Carthage, Massilia, are crushed 

 beneath the heavy arms of Rome; but Britain remains free 

 and populous, guarded by the sea from all the world except 

 the friendly merchants of Gaul. At length, under the most ac- 

 complished of the Roman generals, the country is invaded ; and 

 from the day when Csesar landed in Kent (B.C. 55), our country 

 has not only a history, but a chronology. 



* Herodotus, iii. 115 "from which we are said to have our tin." 



t Pliny, xxxvii. 2 " proximisque Teutonis vendere." 



J Marseilles. Pliny, Hist. Nat. ii. cap. 75; iv. cap. 16. 



|| Pliny, xxxvii. cap. 2. 



