The amber trade, which was probably first directed to the west Cimbrian
coasts, and only subsequently to the Baltic and the country of the
Esthonians, owes its first origin to the boldness and perseverance of
Phoenician coast navigators. In its subsequent extension, it offers a
remarkable instance of the influence which may be exerted by a
predilection for even a single foreign production, in opening an inland
trade between nations, and in making known large tracts of country. In
the same way that the Phocæan Massilians brought the British tin across
France to the Rhone, the amber was conveyed from people to people
through Germany, and by the Celts on either declivity of the Alps to the
Padus, and through Pannonia to the Borysthenes. It was this inland
traffic which first brought the coasts of the Northern ocean into
connexion with the Euxine and the Adriatic.--_Humboldt's Cosmos._
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