2 Hisfory of the English Landed Liter est. 



But Strabo merely creates in his English readers a loriging 

 for more facts when he describes ^ the people of the littoral as 

 clad in black cloaks, with sticks in their hands, and bearded 

 like goats, who led a pastoral and nomad life, and bartered 

 skins and tin for earthenware and salt. "Whence came these 

 black-coated islanders, who in their mining propensities and 

 dress resembled the Spanish Iberians, and in their long beards 

 and pastoral habits the patriarchs of Scripture ? — these priest- 

 ridden monot heists, with their tall slim figures 3 and peaceful 

 mien ; these half-hearted sailors, who paddled about their fore- 

 shores in fragile skin-made coracles ; ^ these importers of brass 

 ornaments ^ and salt, though the metals that composed the 

 former lay hidden beneath their feet, and the latter impreg- 

 nated the waters around them ? Behind these seaside tribes 

 stretched a baffling forest, amid the shadows of which were 

 concealed peoples with whom the casual Phcenician or Cartha- 

 ginian' trader .tad xio dealings, and who, for all they knew to 

 the contrary, might be cannibals like the neighbouring lerni, 

 (dV ais "iisi.c^eand, uatamed as some vague tradition had repre- 

 sented the northern tribes ' to be. What might not Himilco 

 of Carthage have told us,^ who is supposed to have penetrated 

 British seas as far back as one thousand years before our era 

 began, if only he had been as ready a writer as he was bold 

 navigator ? And what did we not lose in the destruction of 

 those portions of the history written by Diodorus, giving us 

 the views and facts about our forefathers, which this shrewd 

 writer had picked up from the officers and men of Caesar's 

 expeditionary force ? ^ But we must be content with the 

 account which Csesar himself has afforded, though information 

 from such a source must for some reasons be regarded with 

 suspicion as liable to exaggeration. The pen which wrote 



* Strabo, A.c. 30, Geofjr., lib. iii., ed. Falcon., p. 289. 

 "' Id. Ibid., h"b. iv. p. 278. 



3 Crai.£? aud Macfarlane, Hisf. nf Entj., bk. 1, cb. iv. p. 102. 



* Strabo, Geotjr., lib. iii. p. 239. 



* Diodorus Sicuhis, lib. v. ch. 82. 

 ^ Festus Avienus, lib. xxxi. 22. 



^ That Britain was known to the earlier Greek and Roman writers, is 

 evident. See note, Craig f.ud Macfarlane, Hist, of Etuj.^ bk. 1, p. 94. 



