Before Chrift 548 — 543. 



45 



fovereign and the nobles, or proprietors of the mines, are enormoufly 

 rich, and the people in general milerably poor. Though the riches of 

 Croefus, king of I.ydia, have become proverbial, his fubjeds were con- 

 tent with very timple houfes ; for, in the royal city of .Sardis, the few 

 which had biick walls were thatched with reeds, and the great bulk of 

 the houfes were built of them entirely. This aatient andopulenr king- 

 dom, was now reduced by Cyrus, king of Perfia, to be a province of his 

 growing empire. But ftill the great nobles were allowed to retam their 

 wealth ; and we find mention of a Lydian in the following age, called 

 Pythius, who was efleemed the richeft man in the world, next to the 

 king of Perfia. [Hc/od. L. i, c. 84 ; L. v, c. lOi ; L. vii, c. 27.] 



543 — The inhabitants of Phocaa, a Grecian city on the Afiatic 

 coaft, were a commercial people, and the firft of the Greeks who traded 

 to remote countries, performing their voyages in long veffels of fi/ty 



\_L. i, c. 6] that the Sygdiles (Si)ley iflands) were 



called aho Oellrymnides, ayd Oaffiti.TiiW.'j More- 

 over, in Richard's map the Pyicntan moi'iitains 

 run far into the fea, (as dircribeJ by Mela in his 

 account of Spain) rxtending to within about lOO 

 miles of the fonth-weft pait of Britain, and only 

 abont 60 from the fouth part of Ireland ; and the 

 Caffiterides arc fcattered at about equal didanccs 

 from all the three. 



From an attentive confiderdtion of all circum- 

 ftances, I believe, it will appear moll probable, that 

 the Tin-idand's, or Caffiterides, of the antients 

 were the iilaiids of Silley, or the fouth-wcft part of 

 Biitain, which, being deeply indented by arms of 

 the fea, mull have appeared like ifl.inds to the firft 

 difcovcrers : or, perhaps, both thefe were included 

 under the fame general name. The Caffitcridei 

 being delcribed by Diodorus Sjcuhij, Stvabo, 

 P;lny, Ptolemy, and Solinns, as ajipendages of 

 Spain, or oppofue to it, need rot furprife or ftag- 

 gerany one who is accuftomed to the irregularity 

 of the antient geographers, tliongh Ptolemy even 

 goes fo far as to fix them by their precife latitude 

 and longitude within a fmall dillancc of the north- 

 weft part of Gpain, wlien we conlider that the 

 fame great geographer defcribes the Ebuda; (Weft- 

 em iflands of Scotland) as appendages of Ireland, 

 and very far diftant from that part of Scotland, 

 from which they are feparated only by narrow 

 founds ; that Pomponius Mela places Thule (Shet- 

 land) clofe upon the coaft of the Belgac, or near 

 the mouths of the Rhine; and tl'.at Strabo, the 

 bcft of the ancient geographers, defcribes Britain, 

 Ireland, and Thii!^, as appendages of Gaul, to fay 

 nothing of greater errors in his geography of coun- 

 tries nearer to his own. Neither is it a very ma- 

 terial ohjcftion, that fomc authors mention both 

 the Caffiterides and Britain, as producing tin, and 

 as uncoimeflcd with each other. For it is reafon- 

 able to fuppofe, that the name of Caffiterides (or 

 Tin-iflands) became obfolete when.the real name of 



the iflands was known, ?.nd when the Cafiiterides, 

 after the deftriiSion of Carthage and the con- 

 queft of Spain by the Roman;-., being no longer 

 the great qmpcrinm of the tin trade, were lofl 

 fight of by writers ; though they ilill retained 

 their fnppofed place in geographical dcfcriptions, 

 and v/ere copied by every fuccceding geographer ; 

 as Fr:/eland, another ifland of dlfputable pofition, 

 has been in later times. The pofition of the Caf- 

 fiterides by Pofidonius, Diodorus, and Strabo, an- 

 fwcrs to no other place fo well as the fouth-weft 

 part of Britain, or Silley ; for there is' no other 

 land producing tin and lead, fituated in the lati- 

 tude of Britain, and to the northward of the narth. 

 weft part of Spain, and divided from it by the 

 Ocean, a name not to be applied to the channels 

 between the maiii land of Spain and the petty 

 iflands adjacent to it. For thefe reafons, though 

 the accounts of the Caffiterides be obfcnre, as may 

 be expefted of a relation coming down to us from 

 hand to hand by means of the later Greek writ, 

 ers, iubje(5ls of Rome, wherein the only people 

 qualified to give information had found an inter, 

 eft in withholding or perverting it, I venture ta 

 confider it as almoft certain, that the modern Corn- 

 wall, and the Silley iflands were the ftaple of the 

 firft foreign trade of the Britilh iflands, and were 

 called by the Phoenicians, the Tin-iflands ; and by 

 the Greeks, as foon as they heard of them, Cafii- 

 terides, or rather Kaffilerides, and Kattiterides ; 

 and it may be oblVrved, that the word is not ge- 

 nuine Greek, but Piioenician. See Bocharl, Gear. 

 facr. col. 650. 



AVe need not fuppofe it impoffible, that Corn- 

 wall fliould be called by a name inferring it to be 

 an ifland, or iflands, when we rtcolled the name 

 of Pelopoiniefus, (the ifland of Pclops) in antient 

 Greece, and the iflands of Thanet, Fnrbtck, 

 Portland, and Dogs, in modern England, none of 

 which ai-e, ftrictly fpeaking, iflands. . 



