PUYtJiUAL CONTK.Mri,ATl()\ oF Tlli: UNlVERriK. 131 



* 



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

 hariaii islands, Tylos and Aradus). 



The amber trade, which was probably directed first to the 

 west Cimbrian shoresj and subsequently to the land of the 



nature, were still carried on in 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 Kielisclies Maga- 

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

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

 Ijrought 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 Electrum, in Die Zeltschrift j'ii 

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

 witli it the same author's Geographie der GriecJien und Romer, tli. ii., 

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

 Tile Massilians, 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 (Glessaria, also called Austrania) decidedly west of tlie Cim- 

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

 pedition of Germanicus suflSciently 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, whei'e, according to the expression of 

 Servius, " mare vicissim turn accedit, tum recedit," applies to tlie coasts 

 between the Holder 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 £estuarium, 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 Ravhandeln 

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

 first acquaintance with the glesfeum of the shores of the Baltic, in tlie 

 land of the iEstui (^Estuorum gentium) and of the Venedi, concerning 

 whom the great philologist Shaffarik {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 Esthonians, 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 Cn'sais 

 (Voigt, Gesch. Preusseri'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, wljich 

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

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

 electron, the sun-stone of the very ancient my thus of the Eridaniis (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. Tiie " amber which was found buried at two places 



