CHAP, xin.] THE SPKEAD OF PHOENICIAN COMMERCE. 461 



Stuart Poole, 1 by the prominence of Egypt and the 

 absence of reference to Assyria in the Iliad and Odyssey. 

 In other words, they were on the Atlantic during the 

 legendary time when the use of iron was superseding 

 that of bronze, and when they were supplying the 

 Greeks with both those metals. But they probably did 

 not introduce iron into the west till it became com- 

 paratively cheap in later times. Professor Nilsson 2 

 extends their influence as far as Scandinavia, and be- 

 lieves that they were the introducers of the civilisation 

 of the Bronze age. I am, however, unable to meet with 

 any traces of their presence as far north as Scandinavia. 

 The Phoenicians were the first of the southern peoples 

 who can be proved to have had direct intercourse with 

 Britain, but that intercourse could not have been very 

 extensive. No tombs or other remains distinctively 

 Phoenician have been discovered in any part of the 

 British Isles. Certain geographical names, however, in 

 Cornwall are considered by Dr. Wiberg to be those 

 given by the Phoenician sailors. The river Tamar, 3 

 and the town Tamaris (Tamerton), (tamara:=an ex- 

 change), recalls to mind the river Tamaris in Galicia. 

 Uxella ( ?Bridg water) = fort, town, village, is the same 

 word as the Sardinian Usellis, and the Maltese Casale ; 

 and the promontory of Herakles (Hartland Point) and 

 the island of Herakleia (Lundy), probably owe their 

 names to the worship of Herakles (Melkarth), which 

 was carried on in most of the Phoenician settlements on 

 the shores of the Mediterranean. 



1 Contemporary Review, Jan. 1878, p. 357. 



2 Die Ureinwohner des Scandinavischen Nordens. I. Das Bronzealter. 



3 Wiberg, Der Einfluss der Massischen Vollcer auf den Norden. Ham- 

 burg, 1867, p. 13. 



