Ancient Britons are tfiought to have used 

 fistiing coracies !il<e ttiese made of 

 wiiiow twigs covered witli tiide. Pyttieas 

 probably saw such boats on his voyage. 



At low tide a causeway links St. Michael's 

 Mount to the mainland. It was across 

 this causeway that ancient Britons carried 

 tin for export to the Continent. At that 

 time the island was known as Ictls. 



As Pytheas sailed up the coast of Britain, he took three more 

 sets of observations. The first, where the longest day was seventeen 

 hours, would be at about Flamborough Head at latitude 5 4° 2' N.; 

 the second, where the longest day was eighteen hours, at Tarbat 

 Ness in northern Scotland, at latitude 57°5 8' N.; and finally at a 

 place where the longest day was nineteen hours, bringing him to 

 the northernmost part of the Shetland Islands, at latitude 61 °N. 

 Pytheas called this place Orkas, and it was here that he heard about 

 a land called Thule. 



This is the most mysterious part of Pytheas' voyage. Even today 

 we cannot be certain where his Thule is, or whether he actually 

 visited it. Some have associated Thule with the Shetlands and the 

 Orkneys, but more Hkely possibilities are Iceland or part of Norway. 

 Both Strabo and Pliny quote Pytheas as saying that Thule is six 

 days north of Britain. But due north, or northeast? There is, how- 

 ever, more evidence, and evidence of a very significant kind. Strabo 

 reports that "Thule ... is near to the congealed sea"; and Solinus 

 writes that "beyond Thule we meet with a sluggish and congealed 

 sea"; and according to Pliny, "after one day's sail from Thule the 

 frozen sea is reached called by some Cronium." These references 

 would seem to strengthen Iceland's claim, for the pack ice off the 

 coast of Greenland in Denmark Strait and down past the western 

 coast of Iceland is very much nearer than any area off Norway. 



Strabo gives us a remarkable description of Pytheas' congealed 

 sea: ". . . There was no longer any distinction of land or sea or air, 

 but a mixture of the three like a sealung in which [Pytheas says] land 

 and sea and everything floats, and this binds all together and can 

 neither be traversed on foot or by boat. . . ." The key word sealung 

 could very well refer to the ice at the edge of the main pack, flexible 

 and having the appearance of jellyfish, especially on a misty day 

 when sea, ice, and sky seem to merge, into one. The writer himself 

 has been caught in a boat in this sort of loose, new sea ice and 

 found it impossible to walk over because of its soft, rubbery 

 consistency. 



Pytheas also tells us that "the barbarians revealed to us the 



24 



