NOTE A.––THE CASSITERIDES.

  To justify the conclusion adopted in the text, it is desirable to discuss the identity of the Cassiterides at length. The locality of these islands is the most important problem in the early history of Western Britain. If they were British, the notices of this quarter of the country in early writers are. by comparison somewhat numerous.
  For many years it has been the accepted belief that they comprised the Scilly Isles, and possibly the neighbouring parts of Cornwall, which, from the sea, have a very insular aspect. Recent opinion has veered southward, and Mr. Elton, (1) with others, assumes that the Cassiterides were the islands in the neighbourhood of Vigo Bay and Corunna, on the north-west angle of the coast of Spain. Tin is found in Spain, and was raised there in early times; but the Cassiterides break into notice as the chief source of that metal, and Cornwall and Devon have occupied that position throughout the historic period down to the modem developments in the East.
  There is grave danger, paradox as it may seem, of over-confidence in relying upon the obvious ; but this is no reason for rushing to the other extreme. If the Cassiterides were the chief source of ancient tin, then we must look to Western Britain for the Cassiterides. If each of the ancient writers who mention the Cassiterides be infallible, then we have some half-dozen tin -bearing archipelagoes instead of one; for their descriptions cannot be reconciled. But since we know that most of them wrote from hearsay, and that the geographical information of the elder world was weak, it is surely the wisest course to construe their statements by the context of physical facts.
  The earliest traveller into these regions who has left a record is Pytheas. He, somewhere in the second half of the fourth century B.C. (c. 330), sailed from Marseilles on a commercial voyage of discovery. The Greek traders there wished to share the profitable trade which the Carthaginians carried on beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, especially to the Cassiterides. Fragments of the narrative of Pytheas have been preserved. These show that he did visit the Cassiterides, and that he came to Britain, where he spent some time, passing on to Thule. According, however, to Mr. Elton (2).
  
  “he does not seem to have been so far as the tin districts in the West, and it is remarkable that he gives no hint which would lead one to suppose that there was any communication between them and the Continent."
  
  Yet, as I have said, Britain was undoubtedly the chief source of tin; while there is evidence in Cornwall that tin ore was raised when the land stood at least thirty feet higher than now, approximating to the submerged forest era, a time so remote as to be altogether beyond historical ken. If then, Pytheas did not reach these western shores he must have failed in the main object of his voyage. All is explained, if the earliest navigators and cosmographers were ignorant that what they called Britain and what they called the Cassiterides, were parts of the same country.
  It is perfectly true that the Cassiterides are commonly treated as having relations with Spain rather than Britain. But this is quite natural, when we bear in mind that Spain was the starting-pointy and that the continuation of the western prolongation of Britain with the main island was a matter of no import£ince to those who were only concerned with the oversea tin trade. The Cassiterides are always, however, spoken of as distinct from Spain, and in a manner which would be misleading if applied to the mere insular dependencies of the Spanish coast. The direct passage to Britain from the Continent would be over the Channel to Kent - hundreds of miles away from the tin. There was nothing to call the Carthaginians thither, and what routes the traffic may have taken later on has nothing to do with our present enquiry.
  Posidonius, however, about a couple of centuries later than Pytheas, admittedly visited, not only Britain, but its tin-producing districts. He is one of the chief authorities for Diodorus Siculus, in whom we read that tin was dug up among the barbanans beyond Lusitania ("above the country of the Lusitanians "), and in the little islands lying off Iberia "in the ocean," thence called Cassiterides; while much was transported out of Britain into Gaul - assertions not inconsistent with the identification of the Scilly Isles with the Cassiterides proper, though the traces of ancient tin- workings there are not more prominent than upon the islets of Vigo Bay ; and the name may even have become a general term for a stanniferous island. But by this time the overland route was in operation.
  It is much more to the purpose that we find Pomponius Mela, himself a Spaniard, and therefore presumably well informed about the products of his country, declaring explicitly that
  
  "among the Kelts are several islands, all called by the single name of the Cassiterides, because they abound in tin.''
  
  The evidence of Strabo is not less forcible;
  
  "Northwards and opposite to the Artabi are the islands called the Cassiterides, situate in the high seas, somewhere about the same latitude as Britain."
  
  Nor is his remark without significance that Publius Crassus taught the voyage thither to all that were willing, "although it was longer than the voyage to Britain.  Of course it was a longer voyage from Spain to the West of Britain for tin, than merely to sail across the Channel.
  So we find Polybius associating the “Britannic Isles and the working of tin," and speaking of "the gold and silver mines of Iberia." And Pliny describes the Cassiterides as “ex adversum Celtiberiae" repeated by Solinus (c. A.D. 80) as “adversum Celtiberiae latus" - phrases hard to strain into the Iberian ranks. Aethico, moreover, uses the same kind of phrase of the Britannic Isles as the others of the Cassiterides - “qua in aversa parte Galliarum".
  That there was a well-accustomed passage from Spain to Britain in the middle of the second century is proved by Aelius Aristides, in his mention of the great island opposite the Iberians, to which expeditions of all kinds went and returned at convenient seasons, thousands of noble and private persons frequently going over. Such an island could only be Britain; and, allowing the utmost discount for pardonable exaggeration, this evidence of direct and regular intercourse, which could not have been of very recent growth, is conclusive.
  Festus Avienus, whom Mr. Elton rather harshly calls " a foolish writer," has preserved for us some details of the voyage of discovery of the Carthaginian Himilco. The narrative of Avienus, to use Professor Rhys’s milder phrase, is certainly confused. Yet from this and other sources we do seem to gather, as it appears to me, that Himilco reached these parts. At least it was after visiting the Cassiterides that he was driven south to the Sargasso Sea. Avienus introduces us to the Œstrymnian Gulf and the Œstrymnian Isles, "rich in tin," which have been identified with the Cassiterides. According to him these isles were two days' sail from Hibernia in boats covered with hides - the still- continuing coracle - and hard by again was Albion. (3). Œstrymnian Isles were clearly not in Vigo Bay; nor is it quite easy to see why Himilco should have been driven so far to sea from that part of the Spanish coast; while off the Lands End he would have been the sheer sport of the Atlantic.
  We are compelled to note how strongly the idea of the insular character, not only of Cornwall, but of other parts of the British mainland, had fixed itself in the ancient topographic mind. Solinus writes:
  
  "A stormy sea divides the Silurian island from the region held by the Dunmonian Britons" - Siluram quoque insulam ab ora quam gens Britanna Dunmonii tenent turbidum uretum distinguit.
  
  Mr. Elton suggests that the Silurian “island" is Wales, which is highly probable. Scilly, indeed, is the only possible competitor; but it could hardly be said of Scilly that the inhabitants still kept to the ancient ways, had neither markets nor money, but traded by barter, and were devoted to the worship of the gods, showing great skill in divination.
  We may assume, however, that Scilly is the island referred to by Sulpicius Severus (early fifth century) in the passage:
  
  “Instantius superius ab episcopis damuatium diximus in Sylinam insulam quae ultra Britanniam situs est deportatus.''
  
  The distinction which obtains elsewhere between Britain and the Cassiterides, is still observed here in the statement that Scilly is beyond Britain.
  But whatever doubts may be held to attach to the identification of the Cassiterides, no one has ventured seriously to question that Devon and Cornwall constitute "that promontory of Britain which is called Belerium," described by Diodorus Siculus after Posidonius, the inhabitants of which were “very fond of strangers, and from their intercourse with foreign merchants civilised in their manner of life." We are all familiar with this testimony to the high character of our long vanished predecessors. Posidonius was equally struck by the fashion in which the natives prepared the tin, "working very skilfully the earth in which it is produced." And then we light upon a passage which has proved more controversial even than references to the Cassiterides. Diodorus states that the smelted metal was taken in blocks in waggons at the ebb of the tide to a certain island called Iktis, where the merchants bought the tin of the natives, and carried it over to Gaul The peculiarity of this island (which, however, it shared with other islands between Britain and Gaul) was that it became a peninsula at low-water, when the tin was taken thither, and an island at high. "Where was Iktis ?" is the problematic sequel to " Where were the Cassiterides?"
  Now it so happens that we have in the Cornish St Michaels Mount a spot that agrees in every particular with the ancient description of Iktis. In the words of Carew
  
                               "Both land and island twice a day,"
  
  it is within easy access of the chief tin producing district of Western Cornwall. It is itself stanniferous. It is much nearer to the tin districts of Devon than either of its chief hypothetical rivals, with the western continuation of the Fosseway running direct between the two. But the Mount has been too obvious! One objection raised to its identification with Iktis has been the improbability of the existence of its present physical characteristics in Roman or Phoenician times. Geological evidence, however, is clear on the other side. Roman and pre-Roman embankments in Somerset and Kent and elsewhere show that no appreciable change has taken place in the relative levels of land and sea on this coast within the historic era. Mr. Pengelly, F.R.S., has proved that, while the insulation of the Mount by subsidence within the period under review is quite out of the question, its insulation by encroachment is equally untenable. Since history began, there never was a time therefore when the Mount did not respond to the description of the old Greek.
  But Diodorus is not the only ancient writer who mentions Iktis, or Iktin, (4) the form in which it appears in his text. Pliny quotes from Timaeus a passage touching the island of Mictis (Mictim in text), undoubtedly the same. It runs fully:
  
  “Timaeus historicus a Britannia introrsus sex dierum navigatione abesse dicit insulam Mictim, in qua candidum plumbum proveniat. Ad eam Britannos vitilibus navigiis corio circumsutis navigare. Sunt qui et alius prodant, Scandiam, Dumnam, Bergos: maximamque omnium Nerigon."
  
  Philemon Holland reads this:
  
  "That further within forth and six days' sail from Britain there lyeth the island Mictis, in which white lead [tin] groweth, and that the Britons do sail thither in wicker vessels, covered with leather round about and sowed. And thereby they do make mention of others besides, to wit Scandia Dumna and Bergos, and the biggest of all the rest Nerigos."
  
  Mr. Elton's version is that Iktis was six days' sail from Britain in an "inward " direction (a phrase which he confesses he does not understand). He then suggests that the real Iktis is the Isle of Thanet (which in ancient days was insulated at high water), and in this view Professor Rhys concurs. But if the words of Timaeus mean anything, surely they mean that the tin was fetched from, not brought to, Mictis by the Britons, and that Mictis was six days' sail from the part of Britain of which he was writing. By no process of accommodation, however Procrustean, can such words be made to apply to Thanet. Moreover, Diodorus asserts that the tin was taken to Iktis in waggons at the ebb - a perfectly superfluous procedure in the case of tin brought to the island by coracle. The statement of the same writer, that Belerium was said to be distant four days' sail from the Continent, also proves the existence of a direct Continental trade.
  To sum this matter up. The real solution of the problem appears to be this: that in the early days of the tin trade the connection of the tin-producing districts of Britain, whether we call them the Cassiterides, or Belerium, or Iktis, with Britain itself was not ascertained or recognised. The Britain known to Caesar was simply the part nearest Gaul; and any product brought thither by land would naturally be thought by him to come from the interior, which explains his statement that tin was found inland. It would be quite a six days' voyage, in the frail craft of the time, from Kent to Cornwall. Coasting and land carriage probably existed then as now; and the trade route to Central Gaul might indifferently have been supplied by either. But both in Caesar's time and earlier the chief trade with the Cassiterides was no doubt direct - at first around the Spanish peninsula, and then across the Continent.

Footnotes

(1)    Origins of English History, 16.

(2)    This is endorsed by Professor Rhys in his Celtic Britain, 7

(3)    The passage from Avienus, as translated by Kenrick in his Phoenicia (p. 217), runs thus: "Beneath this promontory spreads the vast Œstrymnian Gulf, in which rise out of the sea the islands Œstrymnides, scattered with wide intervals, rich in metals of tin and lead. The people are proud, clever, and active, and idl engaged in incessant cares of commerce. They furrow the wide rough strait, and the ocean abounding in sea monsters, with a new species of boat. For they know not how to frame keels with pine or maple, as others use, nor to construct their curved barks with fir; but, strange to tell, they always equip their vessels with skins joined together, and often traverse the salt sea in a hide of leather. It is two days sail from here to the Sacred Island, as the ancients called it, which spreads a wide space of turf in the midst of the waters and is inhabited by the Hibernian people. Near to this again is the broad island of Albion."

(4)    The late Mr. Richard Edmonds regarded this as the true word. Tin in his view being the Phoenician name of the metal, and Ik being Cornish for port, the compound meant simply "tin port”. Professor Rhys, however, declares, "There is not a scrap of evidence, linguistic or other, of the presence of Phoenicians in England at any time" (Celtic Britain, 47), which is rather hard upon those who hold that clouted cream and cob walls are of Phoenician introduction.