CHAPTER IX 

 AMBER 



AMBER is not unfrequently picked up among the 

 pebbles of the East Coast. I once picked up 

 a piece on the beach at Felixstowe as big as a turkey's 

 egg, thinking it was an ordinary flint-pebble and intend- 

 ing to throw it into the sea, when my attention was 

 arrested by its extraordinary lightness, and I found that 

 I had got hold of an unusually large lump of amber. 

 There is a locality where amber occurs in considerable 

 quantity. It is a long way off namely, the promontory 

 called Samland near Konigsberg on the Prussian shore of 

 the Baltic. There it occurs with fossil wood and leaves 

 in strata of early Tertiary age, deposited a little later 

 than our " London clay." It used to be merely picked 

 up on the shore there until recent times, when " mining " 

 for it was started. From this region (the Baltic coast of 

 Prussia) amber was carried by the earliest traders in 

 prehistoric times to various parts of Europe. Their 

 journeyings can be traced by the discovery of amber 

 beads in connexion with interments and dwelling-places 

 along what are called " amber routes " radiating from 

 the amber coast of Prussia. To reach the East Coast 

 of England the bits of amber would have to be carried 

 by submarine currents. Amber travels faster and farther 

 than ordinary stones, on account of its lightness. What 



has been held to be amber is found, also embedded in 



70 



