On the Fhcenician Tin Trade in Cornwall, by R. Edmonds. 
2i 
and the other historians whom he refers to, was the very Belerion 
which he himself has described, and of which the Mount, or Iktin, 
formed a part. To those, however, who are familiar with Mounts- 
bay, this identity is very apparent. " Amongst them that have 
written old stories much like fables, Hecataeus and some others say 
that there is an island in the ocean over against Gaul (as big as 
Sicily), under the Arctic Pole, where the Hyperboreans inhabit, so 
called because they lie beyond the breezes of the north wind. 
That the soil there is very rich and very fruitful, and the climate 
temperate, inasmuch as there are two crops in the year."" * The 
island here referred to can be no other than Britain, But the only 
part of Britain to which the description applies is Mountsbay? 
where still " there are two crops in the year.'' \ As Hecatseus was 
born 549 B.C., the fact recorded must have been known in Grecian 
history as far back at least as the sixth century B.C. : and who so 
likely to have first related it as the Phoenician mariners, then, and 
for centuries before, the greatest navigators in the world ? 
In the same paper I have answered the objections of a writer in 
the Saturday Beview of 8th Nov., 1862 (p. 563), who, finding no 
place but St. Michaels Mount to agree with Diodorus' description 
of Iktin, tries to stultify that author by alleging that he says — 
"not only the Isle of Wight, but all the islands between Gaul and 
Britain, can be reached from the mainland at low water," although, 
as we shall presently see, Diodorus says no such thing. The 
reviewer, in giving us what he thought the meaning of the author, 
seems to have forgotten that Diodorus Siculus lived in an island of 
* Book ii., chap 8. Booth's Trans, i., p. 139. 
+ Plants, which in almost every locality of Britain would perish or be checked by 
the frost, continue to grow in Mountsbay throughout the coldest part of the year; and 
that district consequently yields, in January, February, and ]\Iarch, and sometimes 
even before Christmas, abundant crops of very fine full-grown brocoli, and in April 
and May an equal abundance of potatoes ; from which two classes of vegetables, tens 
of thousands of pounds sterling are realized annually by their sale in the London and 
other markets, several weeks earlier than they could be procured any where else in 
Britain. No sooner are these early crops removed, than the land is planted with otlier 
vegetables, and thus produces two crops in the year, as i-ecorded before the Christian 
era. 
