NOTES. XXX1U 



O 89 ) p. 128. It is easier to determine the locality of the " land of tin" 

 (Britain and the Scilly Islands) than that of the " amber coast ;" for it 

 seems to me very improbable that the old Greek denomination Kao-ffiTfgoi, 

 which was in use even in the Homeric times, is to be derived from a stanni- 

 ferous mountain in the south-west of Spain, called Mount Cassius, and which 

 Avieuus, who was well acquainted with the country, placed between Gaddir 

 and the mouth of a small southern Iberus (Ukert, Geogr. der Griechen und 

 Romer, Theil ii. Abth. i. S. 479). Kassiteros is the ancient Indian Sanscrit 

 word kasttra. Zinn in German, den in Icelandic, tin in English, and tenn in 

 Swedish, is in the Malay and Javanese language, timah ; a similarity of sound 

 which reminds us of that of the old German word glessum (the name given 

 to transparent amber) to the modern " glas," glass. The names of articles of 

 commerce pass from nation to nation, and become adopted into the most 

 different languages (see above, p. 109, and Note 143.) Through the inter- 

 course which the Phoenicians, by means of their factories in the Persian Gulf, 

 maintained with the east coast of India, the Sanscrit work kastira, expressing 

 a most useful product of further India, and still existing among the old 

 Aramaic idioms in the Arabian word kasdir, became known to the Greeks 

 even before Albion and the British Cassiterides had been visited (Aug. Wilh. 

 v. Schlegel, in the indischen Bibliothek, Bd. ii, S. 393 ; Benfey, Indica, S. 

 307 ; Pott, etymol. Forschungen, Th. ii. S. 414 ; Lassen, indische Alter- 

 thumskunde, Bd. i. S. 239). A name often becomes an historical monument, 

 and the etymological analysis of languages, which is sometimes ignorantly 

 derided, is not without its fruit. The ancients were also acquainted with the 

 existence of tin (one of the rarest metals on the globe) in the country of the 

 Artabri and the Callaici, in the north-west part of the Iberian continent 

 (Strabo, lib. iii. p. 147 ; PKn. xxxiv. c. 16) ; nearer of access, therefore, for 

 navigators from the Mediterranean than the Cassiterides (CEstrymnides of 

 Avienus). When I was in Galicia, in 1799, before embarking for the 

 Canaries, mining operations were still carried on, on a very poor scale, in the 

 graflitic mountains (see my Rel. hist. T. i. p. 51 and 53). The occurrence of 

 tin in this locality is of some geological importance, on account of the former 

 connection of Galieia, the peninsula of Brittany, and Cornwall. 



( 17 ) p. 128. Etienne Quatremere, Me'in. de 1'Acad. des Inscript. T. XT. 

 P. ii. 1845, p. 363370. 



( 171 ) p. 128. The early expressed opinion (Heinzea's neues Kielische* 

 Magazin, Th. ii. 1?87, S. 339 ; Sprengei, Gesch. der geogr. Entdeckungen, 

 1792 ; S. 51 ; Voss, krit. Blatter, Bd. ii. S. 392403) is now gaining 

 VOL. 11. 2 D 



