130 COSMOS. 



glass-wares, tissues, and purple dyes, necessarily led to ad- 

 vancement in mathematical and chemical knowledge, and 

 more particularly in the technical arts. " The Sidonians," 

 writes Strabo, " are described as industrious inquirers in as- 

 tronomy, as well as in the science of numbers, to which they 

 have been led by their skill in arithmetical calculation, and 

 in navigating their vessels by night, both of which are indis- 

 pensable to commerce and maritime intercourse."* In order 

 to give some idea of the extent of the globe opened by the 

 navigation and caravan trade of the Phoenicians, we will 

 mention the colonies in the Euxine, on the Bithynian shore 

 (Pronectus and Bithynium), which were probably settled at a 

 very early age ; the Cyclades, and several islands of the ^Egean 

 Sea, first known at the time of the Homeric bard ; the south 

 of Spain, rich in silver (Tartessus and Gades) ; the north of 

 Africa, west of the Lesser Syrtis (Utica, Hadrumetum, and 

 Carthage) ; the tin and amber lands of the north of Europe :t 



* Strabo, lib. xvi., p. 757. 



t The locality of the " land of tin" (Britain and the Scilly Islands) is 

 more easily determined than that of the " amber coast ;" for it appears 

 very improbable that the old Greek denomination KaaaLvepoc, which 

 was already in use in the Homeric times, is to be derived from a 

 mountain in the southwest of Spain, called Mount Cassius, celebrated 

 for its tin ore, and which Avienus, who was well acquainted with the 

 country, placed between Gaddir and the mouth of a small southern 

 Iberus (Ukert, Geogr. der Griechen vnd Romer, theil ii., abth. i., s. 479). 

 Kassiteros is the ancient Indian Sanscrit w^ord kasttra. Dan in Ice- 

 landic ; zimi in German ; tin in English and Danish ; and tenn in Swed- 

 ish, are rendered, in the Malay and Javanese language, by timah; a 

 similarity of sound which calls to mind that of the old German word gJes- 

 sum (the name applied to transparent amber), with the modern German 

 glas, glass. . The names of wares and articles of commerce pass from 

 one nation to another, and into the most different families of languages. 

 Through the intercourse which the Phoenicians maintained with the 

 eastern coast of India, by means of their factories in the Persian Gulf, 

 the Sanscrit word kastira, which expressed so useful a product of 

 Farther India, and still exists among the old Aramaeic idioms in the 

 Arabian word kasdir, may have become known to the Greeks even 

 before Albion and the British Cassiterides had been visited (Aug. Willi, 

 v. Schlegel, in the Indische Bibliothek, bd. ii., s. 393; Benfey, Indien, 

 s. 307; Pott, Etymol. Forschungen, th. ii., s. 414 ; Lassen, Indische Al- 

 terthumskunde, bd. i., s. 239). A name often becomes a historical mon- 

 ument, and the etymological analysis of languages, however it may be 

 derided, is attended by valuable results. The ancients were also ac- 

 quainted with the existence of tin — one of the rarest metals — in the 

 country of the Artabri and the Callaici, in the northwest part of the 

 '^berian continent (Strabo, lib. iii., p. 147 ; Plin., xxxiv., c. 16), which 

 was nearer of access than the Cassiterides ((Estrymnides of Avienus), 

 from the Mediterranean. When, before embai'king for the Canaries, 

 I was in Galicia in 1799, mining operations, although of very inferior 



