THE ISLE OF HONEY 19 
And how long ago this is who shall say ? The 
whereabouts of the Phoenician Barat-Anac, the 
Country of Tin, remained a secret probably for 
ages, jealously guarded by these ancient mariners, 
the first true seamenthat the world had ever known. 
They were expert navigators, venturing enormous 
distances oversea, even in King Solomon’s time; 
and that was a thousand years before the advent 
of Cesar. In all likelihood they had been in fre- 
quent communication with the Britons centuries 
before the Greeks took to searching for this 
wonderful tin-bearing land, and still longer before 
the name Barat-Anac became corrupted into the 
Britannia of the Romans. And it is hardly to be 
supposed that a people of so ancient a civilisation, 
and of so great a repute in the sciences and refine- 
ments of life, as the Phcenicians—a people from 
whom the early Greeks themselves had learned 
the art and practice of letters—could remain in 
touch, century after century, with a nation like the 
Britons without affecting in them enormous im- 
provement and development in every way that 
would appeal to so high-mettled and competent a 
race, 
For high-mettled and capable the Britons were 
even in those old, dim, far-off days. Czesar’s 
account of them, read between the lines, accords 
ill with the commonly accepted notion of a horde 
of savages, pigging together in reed hovels, and 
daubing their naked bodies blue to strike terror 
2—2 
