CHAPTER I

IN NORTHERN MISTS

[Illustration:

"THE GOLDEN CLOUDS CURTAINED THE DEEP WHERE IT LAY,

AND IT LOOKED LIKE AN EDEN AWAY, FAR AWAY"]

IN NORTHERN MISTS

ARCTIC EXPLORATION IN EARLY TIMES

BY FRIDTJOF NANSEN

G.C.V.O., D.Sc., D.C.L., Ph.D., PROFESSOR OF OCEANOGRAPHY

IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHRISTIANIA, ETC.

TRANSLATED BY ARTHUR G. CHATER

ILLUSTRATED

VOLUME ONE

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN: MCMXI

PRINTED BY

BALLANTYNE & COMPANY LTD

AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS

TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN

LONDON

PREFACE

This book owes its existence in the first instance to a rash promise made

some years ago to my friend Dr. J. Scott Keltie, of London, that I would

try, when time permitted, to contribute a volume on the history of arctic

voyages to his series of books on geographical exploration. The subject

was an attractive one; I thought I was fairly familiar with it, and did

not expect the book to take a very long time when once I made a start with

it. On account of other studies it was a long while before I could do

this; but when at last I seriously took the work in hand, the subject in

return monopolised my whole powers.

It appeared to me that the natural foundation for a history of arctic

voyages was in the first place to make clear the main features in the

development of knowledge of the North in early times. By tracing how ideas

of the Northern World, appearing first in a dim twilight, change from age

to age, how the old myths and creations of the imagination are constantly

recurring, sometimes in new shapes, and how new ones are added to them, we

have a curious insight into the working of the human mind in its endeavour

to subject to itself the world and the universe.

But as I went deeper into the subject I became aware that the task was far

greater than I had supposed: I found that much that had previously been

written about it was not to be depended upon; that frequently one author

had copied another, and that errors and opinions which had once gained

admission remained embedded in the literary tradition. What had to be done

was to confine one's self to the actual sources, and as far as possible to

build up independently the best possible structure from the very

foundation. But the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I

perceived--riddle after riddle led to new riddles, and this drew me on

farther and farther.

On many points I arrived at views which to some extent conflicted with

those previously held. This made it necessary to give, not merely the bare

results, but also a great part of the investigations themselves. I have

followed the words of Niebuhr, which P. A. Munch took as a motto for "Det

norske Folks Historie":

"Ich werde suchen die Kritik der Geschichte nicht nach dunkeln Gefühlen,

sondern forschend, auszuführen, nicht ihre Resultate, welche nur blinde

Meinungen stiften, sondern die Untersuchungen selbst in ihrem ganzen

Umfange vortragen."

But in this way my book has become something quite different from what was

intended, and far larger. I have not reached the history of arctic voyages

proper.

Many may think that too much has been included here, and yet what it has

been possible to mention here is but an infinitesimal part of the mighty

labour in vanished times that makes up our knowledge of the North. The

majority of the voyages, and those the most important, on which the first

knowledge was based, have left no certain record; the greatest steps have

been taken by unknown pioneers, and if a halo has settled upon a name here

and there, it is the halo of legend.

My investigations have made it necessary to go through a great mass of

literature, for which I lacked, in part, the linguistic qualifications.

For the study of classical, and of mediæval Latin literature, I found in

Mr. Amund Sommerfeldt a most able assistant, and most of the translations

of Greek and Latin authors are due to him. By his sound and sober

criticism of the often difficult original texts he was of great help to

me.

In the study of Arabic literature Professor Alexander Seippel has afforded

me excellent help, combined with interest in the subject, and he has

translated for me the statements of Arab authors about the North.

In the preparation of this work, as so often before, I owe a deep debt of

gratitude to my old friend, Professor Moltke Moe. He has followed my

studies from the very beginning with an interest that was highly

stimulating; with his extensive knowledge in many fields bordering on

those studies he has helped me by word and deed, even more often than

appears in the course of the book. His intimate acquaintance with the

whole world of myth has been of great importance to the work in many ways;

I will mention in particular his large share in the attempt at unravelling

the difficult question of Wineland and the Wineland voyages. Here his

concurrence was the more valuable to me since at first he disagreed with

the conclusions and views at which I had arrived; but the constantly

increasing mass of evidence, which he himself helped in great measure to

collect, convinced him of their justice, and I have the hope that the

inquiry, particularly as regards this subject, will prove to be of value

to future historical research.

With his masterly knowledge and insight Professor Alf Torp has given me

sound support and advice, especially in difficult linguistic and

etymological questions. Many others, whose names are mentioned in the

course of the book, have also given me valuable assistance.

I owe special thanks to Dr. Axel Anthon Björnbo, Librarian of the Royal

Library of Copenhagen, for his willing collaboration, which has been of

great value to me. While these investigations of mine were in progress, he

has been occupied in the preparation of his exhaustive and excellent work

on the older cartography of Greenland. At his suggestion we have exchanged

our manuscripts, and have mutually criticised each other's views according

to our best ability; the book will show that this has been productive in

many ways. Dr. Björnbo has also assisted me in another way: I have, for

instance, obtained copies of several old maps through him. He has,

besides, sent me photographs of vignettes and marginal drawings from

ancient Icelandic and Norwegian MSS. in the Library of Copenhagen.

Mr. K. Eriksen has drawn the greater part of the reproductions of the

vignettes and the old maps; other illustrations are drawn by me. In the

reproduction of the maps it has been sought rather to bring before the

reader in a clear form the results to which my studies have led than to

produce detailed facsimiles of the originals.

In conclusion I wish to thank Mr. Arthur G. Chater for the careful and

intelligent way in which he has executed the English translation. In

reading the English proofs I have taken the opportunity of making a number

of corrections and additions to the original text.

FRIDTJOF NANSEN

Lysaker, August 1911

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

INTRODUCTION 1

I. ANTIQUITY, BEFORE PYTHEAS 7

II. PYTHEAS OF MASSALIA: THE VOYAGE TO THULE 43

III. ANTIQUITY, AFTER PYTHEAS 74

IV. THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES 125

V. THE AWAKENING OF MEDIÆVAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE NORTH 168

VI. FINNS, SKRIDFINNS [LAPPS], AND THE FIRST SETTLEMENT

OF SCANDINAVIA 203

VII. THE VOYAGES OF THE NORSEMEN: DISCOVERY OF ICELAND

AND GREENLAND 233

VIII. VOYAGES TO THE UNINHABITED PARTS OF GREENLAND IN

THE MIDDLE AGES 279

IX. WINELAND THE GOOD, THE FORTUNATE ISLES, AND THE

DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 312

[Illustration]

INTRODUCTION

"For my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset and the baths

Of all the Western stars until I die."

Tennyson, "Ulysses."

In the beginning the world appeared to mankind like a fairy tale;

everything that lay beyond the circle of familiar experience was a

shifting cloudland of the fancy, a playground for all the fabled beings of

mythology; but in the farthest distance, towards the west and north, was

the region of darkness and mists, where sea, land and sky were merged into

a congealed mass--and at the end of all gaped the immeasurable mouth of

the abyss, the awful void of space.

Out of this fairy world, in course of time, the calm and sober lines of

the northern landscape appeared. With unspeakable labour the eye of man

has forced its way gradually towards the north, over mountains and

forests, and tundra, onward through the mists along the vacant shores of

the polar sea--the vast stillness, where so much struggle and suffering,

so many bitter failures, so many proud victories, have vanished without a

trace, muffled beneath the mantle of snow.

When our thoughts go back through the ages in a waking dream, an endless

procession passes before us--like a single mighty epic of the human

mind's power of devotion to an idea, right or wrong--a procession of

struggling, frost-covered figures in heavy clothes, some erect and

powerful, others weak and bent so that they can scarcely drag themselves

along before the sledges, many of them emaciated and dying of hunger, cold

and scurvy; but all looking out before them towards the unknown, beyond

the sunset, where the goal of their struggle is to be found.

We see a Pytheas, intelligent and courageous, steering northward from the

Pillars of Hercules for the discovery of Britain and Northern Europe; we

see hardy Vikings, with an Ottar, a Leif Ericson at their head, sailing in

undecked boats across the ocean into ice and tempest and clearing the

mists from an unseen world; we see a Davis, a Baffin forcing their way to

the north-west and opening up new routes, while a Hudson, unconquered by

ice and winter, finds a lonely grave on a deserted shore, a victim of

shabby pilfering. We see the bright form of a Parry surpassing all as he

forces himself on; a Nordenskiöld, broad-shouldered and confident, leading

the way to new visions; a Toll mysteriously disappearing in the drifting

ice. We see men driven to despair, shooting and eating each other; but at

the same time we see noble figures, like a De Long, trying to save their

journals from destruction, until they sink and die.

Midway in the procession comes a long file of a hundred and thirty men

hauling heavy boats and sledges back to the south, but they are falling in

their tracks; one after another they lie there, marking the line of route

with their corpses--they are Franklin's men.

And now we come to the latest drama, the Greenlander Brönlund dragging

himself forward over the ice-fields through cold and winter darkness,

after the leader Mylius-Erichsen and his comrade, Hagen, have both

stiffened in the snow during the long and desperate journey. He reaches

the depot only to wait for death, knowing that the maps and observations

he has faithfully brought with him will be found and saved. He quietly

prepares himself for the silent guest, and writes in his journal in his

imperfect Danish:

Perished,--79 Fjord, after attempt return over the inland ice, in

November. I come here in waning moon and could not get farther for

frost-bitten feet and darkness.

The bodies of the others are in the middle of the fjord opposite the

glacier (about 2-1/2 leagues).

Hagen died November 15 and Mylius about 10 days after.

JÖRGEN BRÖNLUND.

What a story in these few lines! Civilisation bows its head by the grave

of this Eskimo.

What were they seeking in the ice and cold? The Norseman who wrote the

"King's Mirror" gave the answer six hundred years ago: "If you wish to

know what men seek in this land, or why men journey thither in so great

danger of their lives, then it is the threefold nature of man which draws

him thither. One part of him is emulation and desire of fame, for it is

man's nature to go where there is likelihood of great danger, and to make

himself famous thereby. Another part is the desire of knowledge, for it is

man's nature to wish to know and see those parts of which he has heard,

and to find out whether they are as it was told him or not. The third part

is the desire of gain, seeing that men seek after riches in every place

where they learn that profit is to be had, even though there be great

danger in it."

The history of arctic discovery shows how the development of the human

race has always been borne along by great illusions. Just as Columbus's

discovery of the West Indies was due to a gross error of calculation, so

it was the fabled isle of Brazil that drew Cabot out on his voyage, when

he found North America. It was fantastic illusions of open polar seas and

of passages to the riches of Cathay beyond the ice that drove men back

there in spite of one failure after another; and little by little the

polar regions were explored. Every complete devotion to an idea yields

some profit, even though it be different from that which was expected.

But from first to last the history of polar exploration is a single mighty

manifestation of the power of the unknown over the mind of man, perhaps

greater and more evident here than in any other phase of human life.

Nowhere else have we won our way more slowly, nowhere else has every new

step cost so much trouble, so many privations and sufferings, and

certainly nowhere have the resulting discoveries promised fewer material

advantages--and nevertheless, new forces have always been found ready to

carry the attack farther, to stretch once more the limits of the world.

But if it has cost a struggle, it is not without its joys. Who can

describe his emotion when the last difficult ice-floe has been passed, and

the sea lies open before him, leading to new realms? Or when the mist

clears and mountain-summits shoot up, one behind another farther and

farther away, on which the eye of man has never rested, and in the

farthest distance peaks appear on the sea-horizon--on the sky above them a

yellowish white reflection of the snow-fields--where the imagination

pictures new continents?...

Ever since the Norsemen's earliest voyages arctic expeditions have

certainly brought material advantages to the human race, such as rich

fisheries, whaling and sealing, and so on; they have produced scientific

results in the knowledge of hitherto unknown regions and conditions; but

they have given us far more than this: they have tempered the human will

for the conquest of difficulties; they have furnished a school of

manliness and self-conquest in the midst of the slackness of varying ages,

and have held up noble ideals before the rising generation; they have fed

the imagination, have given fairy-tales to the child, and raised the

thoughts of its elders above their daily toil. Take arctic travel out of

our history, and will it not be poorer? Perhaps we have here the greatest

service it has done humanity.

We speak of the first discovery of the North--but how do we know when the

first man arrived in the northern regions of the earth? We know nothing

but the very last steps in the migrations of humanity. What a stretch of

time there must have been between the period of the Neanderthal man in

Europe and the first Pelasgians, or Iberians, or Celts, that we find there

in the neolithic age, in the earliest dawn of history. How infinitesimal

in comparison with this the whole of the recent period which we call

history becomes.

What took place in those long ages is still hidden from us. We only know

that ice-age followed ice-age, covering Northern Europe, and to some

extent Asia and North America as well, with vast glaciers which

obliterated all traces of early human habitation of those regions. Between

these ice-ages occurred warmer periods, when men once more made their way

northward, to be again driven out by the next advance of the ice-sheet.

There are many signs that the human northward migration after the last

ice-age, in any case in large districts of Europe, followed fairly close

upon the gradual shrinking of the boundary of the inland ice towards the

interior of Scandinavia, where the ice-sheath held out longest.

The primitive state--when men wandered about the forests and plains of the

warmer parts of the earth, living on what they found by chance--developed

by slow gradations in the direction of the first beginnings of culture; on

one side to roving hunters and fishers, on the other to agricultural

people with a more fixed habitation. The nomad with his herds forms a

later stage of civilisation.

The hunting stage of culture was imposed by necessity on the first

pioneers and inhabitants of the northernmost and least hospitable regions

of the earth. The northern lands must therefore have been first discovered

by roving fishermen who came northwards following the rivers and seashores

in their search for new fishing-grounds. It was the scouting eye of a

hunter that first saw a sea-beach in the dreamy light of a summer night,

and sought to penetrate the heavy gloom of the polar sea. And that

far-travelled hunter fell asleep in the snowdrift while the northern

lights played over him as a funeral fire, the first victim of the polar

night's iron grasp.

Long afterwards came the nomad and the agriculturist and established

themselves in the track of the hunter.

This was thousands of years before any written history, and of these

earliest colonisations we know nothing but what the chance remains we find

in the ground can tell us, and these are very few and very uncertain.

It is not until we come far down into the full daylight of history that we

find men setting out with the conscious purpose of exploring the unknown

for its own sake. With those early hunters, it was doubtless new ground

and new game that drew them on, but they too were attracted, consciously

or unconsciously, by the spirit of adventure and the unknown--so deep in

the soul of man does this divine force lie, the mainspring, perhaps, of

the greatest of our actions. In every part of the world and in every age

it has driven man forward on the path of evolution, and as long as the

human ear can hear the breaking of waves over deep seas, as long as the

human eye can follow the track of the northern lights over silent

snow-fields, as long as human thought seeks distant worlds in infinite

space, so long will the fascination of the unknown carry the human mind

forward and upward.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Ship of the Egyptian Punt expedition, 17th century B.C. (J.

DÜMICHEN)]

CHAPTER I

ANTIQUITY, BEFORE PYTHEAS

The learned world of early antiquity had nothing but a vague premonition

of the North. Along the routes of traffic commercial relations were

established at a very early time with the northern lands. At first these

ran perhaps along the rivers of Russia and Eastern Germany to the Baltic,

afterwards along the rivers of Central Europe as well. But the information

which reached the Mediterranean peoples by these routes had to go through

many intermediaries with various languages, and for this reason it long

remained vague and uncertain.

What the people of antiquity did not know, they supplied by poetical and

mythical conceptions; and in time there grew up about the outer limits of

the world, especially on the north, a whole cycle of legend which was to

lay the foundation of ideas of the polar regions for thousands of years,

far into the Middle Ages, and long after trustworthy knowledge had been

won, even by the voyages of the Norsemen themselves.

[Sidenote: Origin of the word Arctic]

Long before people knew whether there were lands and seas far in the

north, those who studied the stars had observed that there were some

bodies in the northern sky which never set, and that there was a point in

the vault of heaven which never changed its place. In time, they also

found that, as they moved northwards, the circle surrounding the stars

that were always visible became larger, and they saw that these in their

daily movements described orbits about the fixed point or pole of the

heavens. The ancient Chaldeans had already found this out. From this

observation it was but a short step to the deduction that the earth could

not be flat, as the popular idea made it, but must in one way or another

be spherical, and that if one went far enough to the north, these stars

would be right over one's head. To the Greeks a circle drawn through the

constellation of the Great Bear, which they called "Arktos," formed the

limit of the stars that were always visible. This limit was therefore

called the Bear's circle, or the "Arctic Circle," and thus this

designation for the northernmost regions of the earth is derived from the

sky.

[Illustration: The world according to Hecatæus (BUNBURY)]

[Sidenote: Œcumene and Oceanus]

[Sidenote: Herodotus on the ocean]

According to the common Greek idea it was the countries of the

Mediterranean and of the East that formed the disc of the earth, or

"œcumene" (the habitable world). Around this disc, according to the

Homeric songs (the Iliad was put into writing about 900 B.C.), flowed the

all-embracing river "Oceanus," the end of the earth and the limit of

heaven. This deep, tireless, quietly flowing river, whose stream turned

back upon itself, was the origin and the end of all things; it was not

only the father of the Oceanides and of the rivers, but also the source

whence came gods and men. Nothing definite is said of this river's farther

boundary; perhaps unknown lands belonging to another world whereon the sky

rested were there; in any case we meet later, as in Hesiod, with ideas of

lands beyond the Ocean, the Hesperides, Erythea, and the Isles of the

Blest, which were probably derived from Phœnician tales. Originally

conceived as a deep-flowing river, Oceanus became later the all-embracing

empty ocean, which was different from the known sea (the Mediterranean)

with its known coasts, even though connected with it. Herodotus (484-424

B.C.) is perhaps the first who used the name in this sense; he definitely

rejects the idea of Oceanus as a river and denies that the "œcumene"

should be drawn round, as though with a pair of compasses, as the Ionian

geographers (Hecatæus, for example) thought. He considered it proved that

the earth's disc on the western side, and probably also on the south, was

surrounded by the ocean, but said that no one could know whether this was

also the case on the north and north-east. In opposition to Hecatæus[1]

and the Ionian geographers (the school of Miletus) he asserted that the

Caspian Sea was not a bay of the northern Oceanus, but an independent

inland sea. Thus the "œcumene" became extended into the unknown on the

north-east. He mentions several peoples as dwelling farthest north; but to

the north of them were desert regions and inaccessible mountains; how far

they reached he does not say.

[Illustration: The world according to the ideas of Herodotus (J. MURRAY)]

He thus left the question undetermined, because, with the sound

cool-headedness of the inquirer, which made him in a sense the founder of

physical geography, he trusted to certain observations rather than to

uncertain speculations; and therefore he maintained that the geographers

of the Ionian school had not provided adequate proofs that the world was

really surrounded by sea on all sides. But nevertheless, it was, perhaps,

his final opinion that the earth's disc swam like an island in Oceanus.

[Sidenote: Division of the ocean]

This common name for the ocean was soon dropped, and men spoke instead of

the Outer Sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules in contradistinction to the

Inner Sea (i.e., the Mediterranean). The Outer Sea was also called the

Atlantic Sea after Atlas. This name is first found in Herodotus. South of

Asia was the Southern Ocean or the Erythræan Sea (the Red Sea and Indian

Ocean). North of Europe and Asia was the Northern Ocean; and the Caspian

Sea was a bay of this, in the opinion of the majority. Doubtless, most

people thought that these various oceans were connected; but the common

name Oceanus does not reappear as applied to them until the second century

B.C.[2]

[Sidenote: Homeric ideas of the universe]

According to the Homeric conception the universe was to be imagined

somewhat as a hollow globe, divided in two by the disc of the earth and

its encircling Oceanus; the upper hemisphere was that of light, or the

heaven; the lower one Tartarus, hidden in eternal darkness. Hades lay

beneath the earth, and Tartarus was as far below Hades as the sky was

above the earth. The solid vault of heaven was borne by Atlas, but its

extremities certainly rested upon Oceanus (or its outer boundary), or at

least were contained thereby. According to Hesiod (about 800 B.C.) an

anvil falling from heaven would not reach earth till the tenth day, and

from the earth it would fall for nine days and nine nights and not reach

the bottom of Tartarus until the tenth. This underworld is filled to the

brim with triple darkness, and the Titans have been hurled into it and

cannot come out. On the brink the limits of the earth, the waste Oceanus,

black Tartarus, and the starry heaven all coincide. Tartarus is a deep

gulf at which even the gods shudder; in a whole year it would be

impossible to search through it.[3]

So early do we find three conceptions which two thousand years later still

formed the foundation of the doctrine of the earth's outer limits,

especially on the north: (1) the all-embracing Oceanus or empty ocean; (2)

the coincidence of sky, sea, land and underworld at the uttermost edge;

and lastly (3) the dismal gulf into which even the gods were afraid of

falling.

[Sidenote: Spherical form of the earth]

These or similar ideas still obtained long after the mathematical

geographers had conceived the earth as a sphere. Pythagoras (568-about 494

B.C.) was probably the first to proclaim the doctrine of the spherical

form of the earth. He relied less upon observation than upon the

speculative idea that the sphere was the most perfect form. Before him

Anaximander of Miletus (611-after 547 B.C.), to whom are attributed the

invention of the gnomon or sun-dial, and the first representation of the

earth's disc on a map, had maintained that the earth was a cylinder

floating in space; the inhabited part was the upper flat end. His pupil

Anaximenes (second half of the sixth century B.C.) thought that the earth

had the form of a trapezium, supported by the air beneath, which it

compressed like the lid of a vase; while before him Thales of Miletus

(640-about 548 B.C.) was inclined to hold that the earth's disc swam on

the surface of the ocean, in the middle of the hollow sphere of heaven,

and that earthquakes were caused by movements of the waters.[4]

[Sidenote: Doctrine of zones]

[Sidenote: The abyss]

Parmenides of Elea (about 460 B.C.) divided the earth's sphere into five

zones or belts, of which three were uninhabitable: the zone of heat, or

the scorched belt round the equator, and the two zones of cold at the

poles. Between the warmth and the cold there were on either side of the

hot zone two temperate zones where men might live. This division was

originally derived from the five zones of the heavens, where the Arctic

Circle formed the boundary of the northern stars that are always visible,

and the tropics that of the zone dominated by the sun. Pythagoras seems to

have been the first to transfer it to the globe, the centre of the

universe.[5] This idea of the earth's five habitable and uninhabitable

zones was current till nearly the end of the Middle Ages; but at the same

time one finds, often far on in the Middle Ages, the former conceptions of

the empty ocean encircling all, and of the "œcumene" swimming in it as an

island. Occasionally we meet with a vast unknown continent beyond this

ocean, belonging to another world, which no one can reach.[6] Together

with these theories, though not very conspicuously, the belief in the

immeasurable gulf at the edge of the world also persisted; and this became

the "Ginnungagap" of our forefathers.

The conception of the earth's form and of its uttermost limits was thus by

no means consistent, and on some points it was contradictory. We must

always, and especially in dealing with past times, distinguish between the

views of the scientific world and those of ordinary people, two aspects

which were often hopelessly mixed together. And again in the scientific

world we must distinguish between the mathematical-physical geographers

and the historical, since the latter dealt more with descriptions and were

apt to follow accounts and legends rather than what was taught by physical

observations.

[Sidenote: The Rhipæan Mountains]

[Sidenote: Læstrygons and Cimmerians]

The world which the Greeks really knew was bounded in the earlier period

on the north by the Balkans. These again gave rise to the mythical Rhipæan

Mountains, which were soon moved farther to the north or north-east[7] as

knowledge increased, and so they and the Alps were made the northern

boundary of the known world. As to what lay farther off, the Greeks had

very vague ideas; they seem to have thought that the frozen polar

countries began there, where it was so cold that people had to wear

breeches like the Scythians; or else it was a good climate, since it lay

north of the north wind which came from the Rhipæan Mountains. But that

some genuine information about the North had reached them as early as the

time of the Odyssey seems to be shown by the tale of the Læstrygons--who

had the long day, and whose shepherds, driving their flocks in at evening,

could call to those who were setting out in the morning, since the paths

of day and night were with them so close to one another--and of the

Cimmerians at the gates of the underworld, who lived in a land of fog, on

the shores of Oceanus, in eternal cheerless night. It is true that the

poet seems to have imagined these countries somewhere in the east or

north-east, probably by the Black Sea; for Odysseus came from the

Læstrygons to the isle of Ææa "by the mansions and dancing-places of the

Dawn and by the place where the sun rises." And from Ææa the Greek hero

steered right out into the night and the mist on the dangerous waters of

Oceanus and came to the Cimmerians,[8] who must therefore have dwelt

beyond the sunrise, shrouded in cloud and fogs. It might be supposed that

it was natural to the poet to believe that there must be night beyond the

sunrise and on the way to the descent to the nether regions; but it is,

perhaps, more probable that both the long day and the darkness and fog are

an echo of tales about the northern summer and the long winter night, and

that these tales reached the Greeks by the trade-routes along the Russian

rivers and across the Black Sea, for which reason the districts where

these marvels were to be found were reported to lie in that direction. A

find in the passage-graves of Mycenæ (fourteenth to twelfth century B.C.)

of beads made of amber from the Baltic,[9] besides many pieces of amber

from the period of the Dorian migration (before the tenth century) found

during the recent English excavations of the temple of Artemis at

Sparta,[10] furnish certain evidence that the Greek world had intercourse

with the Baltic countries long before the Odyssey was put into writing in

the eighth century, even though the northern lands of this poem seem to

have been limited by a communication by sea between the Black Sea and the

Adriatic, running north of the Balkan peninsula. Perhaps this imaginary

communication may have been conceived as going by the Ister (Danube),

which, at any rate later, was thought to have another outlet in the

Adriatic. We may also find echoes of tales about the dark winter and light

summer of the North in Sophocles's tragedy, where we are told that

Orithyia was carried off by Boreas and borne over

... the whole mirror of the sea, to the edge of the earth,

To the source of primæval night, where the vault of heaven ends,

Where lies the ancient garden of Phœbus[11]

--though images of this sort may also be due to an idea that the sun

remained during the night beyond the northern regions.

[Sidenote: The Hyperboreans]

According to a comparatively late Greek conception there was in the far

North a happy people called the Hyperboreans. They dwelt "under the

shining way" (the clear northern sky) north of the roaring Boreas, so far

that this cold north wind could not reach them, and therefore enjoyed a

splendid climate. They did not live in houses, but in woods and groves.

With them injustice and war were unknown, they were untouched by age or

sickness; at joyous sacrificial feasts, with golden laurel-wreaths in

their hair, and amid song and the sound of the cithara and the dancing of

maidens, they led a careless existence in undisturbed gladness, and

reached an immense age. When they were tired of life they threw

themselves, after having eaten and drunk, joyfully and with wreaths in

their hair, into the sea from a particular cliff (according to Mela and

Pliny, following Hecatæus of Abdera). Among other qualities they had the

power of flying, and one of them, Abaris, flew round the world on an

arrow. While some geographers, especially the Ionians, placed them in the

northern regions, beyond the Rhipæan Mountains,[12] Hecatæus of Abdera

(first half of the third century B.C.), who wrote a work about the

Hyperboreans, collected from various sources, and more like a novel than

anything else, declares that they dwelt far beyond the accessible regions,

on the island of Elixœa in the farthest northern Oceanus, where the tired

stars sink to rest, and where the moon is so near that one can easily

distinguish the inequalities of its surface. Leto was born there, and

therefore Apollo is more honoured with them than other gods. There is a

marvellous temple, round like a sphere,[13] which floats freely in the air

borne by wings, and which is rich in offerings. To this holy island Apollo

came every ninth year; according to some authorities he came through the

air in a car drawn by swans. During his visit the god himself played the

cithara and danced without ceasing from the spring equinox to the rising

of the Pleiades. The Boreads were hereditary kings of the island, and were

likewise keepers of the sanctuary; they were descendants of Boreas and

Chione. Three giant brothers, twelve feet high, performed the service of

priests. When they offered the sacrifice and sang the sacred hymns to the

sound of the cithara, whole clouds of swans came from the Rhipæan

Mountains, surrounded the temple and settled upon it, joining in the

sacred song.

Theopompus (Philip of Macedon's time) has given us, if we may trust

Ælian's account ["Varia," iii. c. 18; about 200 A.D.], a remarkable

variation of the Hyperborean legend in combination with others:

Europe, Asia, and Africa were islands surrounded by Oceanus; only that

land which lay outside this world was a continent; its size was

immense. The animals there were huge, the men were not only double our

size, but lived twice as long as we. Among many great towns there

were two in particular greater than the rest, and with no resemblance

to one another; they were called Machimos (the warlike) and Eusebes

(the pious). The description of the latter's peaceful inhabitants has

most features in common with the Hyperborean legend. The warlike

inhabitants of Machimos, on the other hand, are born armed, wage war

continually, and oppress their neighbours, so that this one city rules

over many peoples, but its inhabitants are no less than two millions.

It is true that they sometimes die of disease, but that happens

seldom, since for the most part they are killed in war, by stones, or

wood [that is, clubs], for they are invulnerable to iron. They have

such superfluity of gold and silver that with them gold is of less

value than iron is with us. Once indeed they made an expedition to our

island [that is, Europe], came over the Ocean ten millions strong and

arrived at the land of the Hyperboreans. But when they learned that

these were the happy ones of our earth, and found their mode of life

bad, poverty-stricken and despicable, they did not think it worth

while to proceed farther.

Among them dwell men called Meropians, in many great cities. On the

border of their country is a place which bears the significant name

Anostos (without return), and resembles a gulf ("chiasma"). There

reigns there neither darkness nor light, but a veil of mist of a dirty

red colour lies over it. Two streams flow about this place, of which

one is called Hedone (the stream of gladness), the other Lype (the

stream of sorrow), and by the banks of each stand trees of the size of

a great plane-tree. The fruit of the trees by the river of sorrow has

the effect that any one who eats of it sheds so many tears that for

the rest of his life he melts away in tears and so dies. The other

trees that grow by the river of gladness bear fruit of a quite

different kind. With him who tastes it all former desires come to

rest; even what he has passionately loved passes into oblivion, he

becomes gradually younger and goes once more through the previous

stages of his existence in reverse order. From an old man he passes to

the prime of life, becomes a youth, a boy, and then a child, and with

that he is used up. Ælian adds: "And if the Chionian's [that is,

Theopompus of Chios] tale appears credible to any one, then he may be

believed, but to me he seems to be a mythologist, both in this and in

other things."

There can be no doubt that the regions which we hear of in this story,

with the Hyperboreans, the enormous quantities of gold, the gulf without

return, and so on, were imagined as situated beyond the sea in the North;

and in the description of the warlike people of Machimos who came in great

hordes southward over the sea, one might almost be tempted to think of

warlike northerners, who were slain with stones and clubs, but not with

iron, perhaps because they had not yet discovered the use of iron.[14]

The legend of the happy Hyperboreans in the North has arisen from an error

of popular etymology, and it has here been treated at some length as an

example of how geographical myths may originate and develop.[15] The name

in its original form was certainly the designation of those who brought

offerings to the shrine of Apollo at Delphi (perhaps also in Delos). They

were designated as "perpheroi" or "hyper-pheroi" (bringers over), which

again in certain northern Greek dialects took the forms of "hyper-phoroi"

or "hyper-boroi;" this, by an error, became connected in later times with

"Boreas," and their home was consequently transferred to the North, many

customs of the worship of Apollo being transferred with it [see O.

Crusius, 1890, col. 2830]. This gives at the same time a natural

explanation of their many peculiarities, their sanctity, their power of

flight and the arrow (Apollo's arrow), their ceremonial feasts, and their

throwing themselves from a certain cliff,[16] and so on, all of which is

derived from the worship of Apollo. Apollonius of Rhodes (about 200 B.C.)

relates that according to the legends of the Celts (in North Italy ?)

amber originated from the tears of Apollo, which he shed by thousands when

he came to the holy people of the Hyperboreans and forsook the shining

heaven.

When, after the conquests of Alexander, the Greeks became acquainted with

the mythical world of India, they naturally connected the Indians'

legendary country, "Uttara Kuru," beyond the Himalayas, with the country

of the Hyperboreans. "This land is not too cold, not too warm, free from

disease; care and sorrow are unknown there; the earth is without dust and

sweetly perfumed; the rivers run in beds of gold, and instead of pebbles

they roll down pearls and precious stones."

The mythical singer Aristeas of Proconnesus (sixth century ?)--to whom was

attributed the poem "Arimaspeia"--is said (according to Herodotus) to have

penetrated into the country of the Scythians as far as the northernmost

people, the Issedonians. The latter told him of the one-eyed, long-haired

Arimaspians, who lived still farther north, at the uttermost end of the

world, before the cave from which Boreas rushes forth. On their northern

border dwelt the Griffins, lion-like monsters with the wings and beaks of

eagles;[17] they were the guardians of the gold which the earth sends

forth of itself. But still farther north, as far as the sea, were the

Hyperboreans.

But the learned Herodotus (about 450 B.C.) doubted that the Hyperboreans

dwelt to the north of Boreas; for, said he, if there are people north of

the north wind, then there must also be people south of the south wind.

Neither did he credit the Scythians' tales about goat-footed people[18]

and Sleepers far in the North. Just as little did this sceptic believe

that the air of Scythia was full of feathers which prevented all seeing

and moving; it was, he thought, continuous snowfall that the Scythians

described thus. On the other hand, he certainly believed in the Amazons,

though whether they dwelt in the North, as later authors considered, he

does not say.

The idea of the Sleepers, who slept for six months, may very probably be

due to legendary tales of the long northern winter-night, the length of

which was fixed at six months by theoretical speculations, these tales

being confused with reports that the people of Scythia slept a great part

of the winter, as even to-day the peasants are said to do in certain parts

of Russia, where they almost hibernate. Nor must the possibility be

overlooked of stories about the winter's sleep of animals, bears, for

example, being transferred to men.

Later learned geographers, in spite of the scepticism of Herodotus,

occupied themselves in assigning to the Hyperboreans a dwelling-place in

the unknown. The founder of scientific geography, Eratosthenes of Cyrene

(275-195 B.C.), declared that Herodotus's method of disproving the

existence of the Hyperboreans was ridiculous. [Cf. Strabo, i. 61.]

Even so long as five hundred years after Herodotus, Pliny declared the

Hyperboreans to be a historical people, whose existence could not be

doubted; and on the maps of the Middle Ages we always find them in the

most northern inhabited regions, together with the Amazons and other

peoples; we even find the Hyperborean Mountains ("Hyperborei Montes") in

Northern Europe and the Hyperborean Sea ("Oceanus Hyperboreus") to the

north of them. Adam of Bremen (eleventh century) thought that the

Scandinavians were the Hyperboreans.

[Illustration: Trade-routes between the Mediterranean and the North]

[Sidenote: Trade-routes between the Mediterranean and the North]

Archæological finds show that as long ago as the Scandinavian Bronze Age,

or before, there must have been some sort of communication between the

Mediterranean and the northern lands. One of the earliest trade-routes

between the Mediterranean and the Baltic certainly went from the Black Sea

up the navigable river Borysthenes (Dnieper), of which early mention is

made by the Greeks, thence along its tributary the Bug to the Vistula, and

down the latter to the coast. We also find this route in common use in

later antiquity. When we first meet with the Goths in history they are

established at both ends of it, by the mouths of the Vistula and of the

Borysthenes. The Eruli, who came from the North, are also mentioned by the

side of the Goths on the Black Sea. What the wandering nation of the

Cimmerians was we do not know, but, as before remarked (p. 14), they may

have been Cimbri who in those early times had migrated to the northern

shore of the Black Sea by this very route. This trade-route was well known

in its details to our forefathers in Scandinavia, which likewise points to

an ancient communication. Somewhat later it is probable that men travelled

from the Baltic up the Vistula and across to the March, a tributary of the

Danube, and so either down this river to the Black Sea or overland to the

Adriatic. A similar line of communication certainly ran between the North

Sea and the Mediterranean along the Elbe to the Adriatic, and up the

Rhine across to the Rhone and down this to the coast, or across the Alps

to the Po.

[Illustration: Cromlechs: on the right, in Portugal (after Cartailhac); on

the left, in Denmark (after S. Müller)]

But very early there was also communication by sea along the coasts of

western Europe between the Mediterranean and the North. This is shown

amongst other things by the distribution, about 2000 B.C., of cromlechs

over Sicily, Corsica, Portugal and the north of Spain, Brittany, the

British Isles, the North Sea coast of Germany, Denmark and southern

Scandinavia as far as Bohuslen [cf. S. Müller, 1909, p. 24 f.], and

perhaps farther. Somewhat later, in the middle of the second millennium

B.C., the passage-graves or chambered barrows followed the same route

northward from the Mediterranean. That this sea-communication was

comparatively active in those far-off times is proved by the fact that

cromlechs, which originated in the grave-chambers of the beginning of the

Mycenæan period in the eastern Mediterranean, reached Denmark, by this

much longer route round the coast, before the single graves, which were an

older form in the Mediterranean countries, but which spread by the slower

route overland, through Central Europe.

That as far back as the Stone Age there was communication by one way

or another, perhaps along the coast between Spain and the shore of the

North Sea or the Baltic, appears probable from the fact that amber

beads have been found in the Iberian peninsula containing 2 per cent.

of succinic acid, a proportion which is taken to indicate its northern

(Baltic) origin [cf. L. Siret, 1909, p. 138].

On account of the many intermediaries, speaking different languages,

through which it passed, the information which reached the Mediterranean

by these various routes was very defective. According to Herodotus [iv.

24] the Scythians on their trading journeys to the bald-headed Agrippæans

required no fewer than seven different interpreters to enable them to

barter with the peoples on the way. Their first more direct knowledge of

northern and western Europe must certainly have reached the Mediterranean

peoples through the tin trade and the amber trade. It is worth remarking

that it was precisely these two articles, representing two powerful sides

of human nature, utility and the love of ornament, that were to be of such

great importance also as regards knowledge of the North.

[Illustration: Ancient Egyptian ship; from a grave in western Thebes

(after R. Lepsius)]

[Sidenote: Tin in antiquity]

We do not know when, where, or how tin first came into use, the metal

which, together with copper, was as important in the Bronze Age as iron is

in our time. In Egypt it is found in the oldest pyramid-graves, and in the

third millennium B.C. bronze was in general use there, though we know not

whence the tin came to make it. Tin-ore occurs in comparatively few places

on the earth, and if China, which formed a world by itself, be excluded,

the only places where we know that the metal was obtained in ancient times

are north-west Spain, the Cassiterides (probably in Brittany) and

Cornwall,[19] which still possesses rich deposits; and as far as we can

trace history back, the civilised peoples of the Mediterranean and the

Orient obtained their tin from western Europe.[20] If the first tin in

Egypt and in the valley of the Euphrates also came from there, the

civilisation of western Europe, implied by regular working of mines, would

be given a venerable age which could almost rival the oldest civilisations

of the Mediterranean. But this is difficult to believe, as we should

expect to find traces of this early connection with Egypt along the

trade-routes between that country and the place of origin of the tin; and

no archæological evidence to prove this is at present forthcoming.[21]

This possibility is nevertheless not wholly excluded: finds of beads

of northern (?) amber in Egyptian graves of the Fifth Dynasty (about

3500 B.C.) may point to ancient unknown communication with the

farthest parts of Europe. In Spain, too, neolithic objects have been

found, of ivory and other substances, which may have come from Egypt

[cf. L. Siret, 1909]. It is certain that the earliest notices of tin

in literature mention it as coming from the uttermost limits of

Europe. In his lament over Tyre the prophet Ezekiel says [xxvii. 12]:

"Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of

riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs."

Herodotus [iii. 115] says that it came from the Cassiterides. As

Tarsis was the starting-point of the tin-trade with the

Cassiterides,[22] these two statements are in agreement.

Figures and thin rods of tin have been found in association with stone

implements on the sites of pile-dwellings in Switzerland. Tin rings

have also been found at Hallstatt. In barrows (of the Bronze Age ?) in

the island of Anrum, on the west coast of Sleswick, there were found

a dagger or arrowhead and several other objects of tin, besides a lump

of the metal, and in Denmark it is known that tin was used for

ornament on oak chests of the earliest Bronze Age, which again points

to coastal traffic with the south-west.

In the Iliad tin is spoken of as a rare and costly metal, used for the

decoration of weapons, and it appears that arms were then made of copper,

bronze not being yet in general use, as was the case in the later time of

the Odyssey. But in the excavations at Troy, curiously enough, bronze

objects were found immediately above the neolithic strata, which would

seem to show that the Bronze Age reached the Greeks from Egypt without any

intervening copper age.

* * * * *

The Homeric songs do not allude to tin as a Phœnician commodity, like

amber. This may mean that the Greeks even in the earliest times obtained

it through their own commercial relations with Gaul, without employing the

Phœnicians as middlemen.

Possibly the Greek word for tin, "kassiteros," and the name of the

tin-islands, "Kassiterides," themselves point to this direct connection.

The same word is also found in Sanscrit, "kastîra," and in Arabic,

"qazdir." Professor Alf Torp thinks that the word both in Greek and in

Sanscrit "must be borrowed from somewhere, but whence or when is not

known. 'Kassiteros,' of course, occurs as early as Homer, 'kastîra' is in

Indian literature much later, but as far as that goes it may well be old

in Sanscrit. I do not know of any Celtic word one could think of; a

'cassitír' (woodland) is hardly to the point; it is true that 'tír' means

'land,' but no other 'cass' is known to me except one that means 'hair'"

(in a letter of November 9, 1909). We may therefore look upon it as

certain that "kassiteros" is not an original Greek word; it must in all

probability have come from the country whence the Greeks first obtained

tin (analogous cases are the name of copper from the island of Cyprus,

that of bronze from Brundisium, etc.). That this country was India, as

some have thought, is improbable, since it is stated in the "Periplus

Maris Erythræi" [xlix.], confirmed by Pliny [xxxiv. 163], that tin was

imported into India from Alexandria in exchange for ivory, precious stones

and perfumes; we must therefore suppose that the name reached India with

the tin from the Greeks, and not vice versâ. It is very possible that the

word consists of two parts, of which the second "-teros" may be connected

with the Celtic word "tír" for land (Latin "terra"). The first part,

"kassi," occurs in many Celtic words and names. Ptolemy [ii. 8] mentions

in Gaul, in or near Brittany: "Bidu-kasioi," "Uenelio-kasioi,"

"Tri-kasioi," and "Uadi-kasioi." As mentioned by Reinach [1892, p. 278],

there was a people in Brittany called "Cassi" (a British king,

"Cassi-vellaunos," an Arvernian chief, "Ver-cassi-vellaunos," etc.). It

may be supposed that the country was named after these people, or was in

some other way referred to by such a word and called "Kassi-tír." In this

case the Cassiterides might be sought for in Brittany, and this agrees

with what we have arrived at in another way. But this would entail the

assumption that the Celts were already in Gaul at the time of the Iliad.

Professor Alf Torp has called attention to the remarkable circumstance

that "the Cymric word for tin, 'ystaen,' resembles 'stannum,' which cannot

be genuine Latin. I am inclined to think that both words are derived from

an Iberian word; the Romans would in that case have got it from Galicia,

and the Cymri doubtless from a primitive Iberian population in the British

Isles. In some way or other our word 'tin' must be connected with this

word, though the 'i' is curious in the face of the Cymric 'a'" (letter of

November 9, 1909). In connection with this hypothesis of Professor Torp,

it may be of interest to notice that in the tin district of Morbihan in

Brittany, by the mouth of the Vilaine, is "Penestin," where the deposits

still contain much tin, and the name of which must come from the Celtic

"pen" (== head, cape) and "estein" (== tin).[23] It is conceivable that

the Latin "stannum" was derived from Brittany rather than from Galicia.

In ancient Egyptian there is no word for tin; as in early Latin, it is

described as white lead (dhti hs), which may point to a common western

origin for these two metals.

There has been great diversity of opinion as to where the Cassiterides of

the Greeks were to be found. Herodotus [iii. 115] did not know where they

were: "in spite of all his trouble, he had not been able to learn from any

eye-witness what the sea is like in that region [that is, on the north

side] of Europe. But it is certain that tin comes from the uttermost end,

as also amber." Posidonius mentioned the islands as lying between Spain

and Britain (see above, p. 23). Strabo says [iii. 175]:

"The Cassiterides are ten, and lie near to one another, in the midst

of the sea northwards from the harbour of the Artabri [Galicia]. One

of them is unoccupied, while the others are inhabited by people in

black cloaks, with the robe fastened on the breast and reaching down

to their feet, who wander about with staves in their hands like the

Furies in tragedy. They live for the most part as herdsmen on their

cattle; but as they also have mines of tin and lead they barter these

metals and hides for pottery, salt, and articles of copper with the

merchants. Formerly the Phœnicians alone carried on this trade from

Gadir and kept the sea-route secret from every one else; but as the

Romans once sailed in pursuit of one of their vessels with the object

of finding out the position of their markets, the captain

intentionally allowed his ship to be stranded on a sandbank and

brought the same destruction upon his pursuers; but he saved himself

from the wreck, and was compensated by the State for the value of his

loss. Nevertheless the Romans discovered the sea-route after repeated

attempts, and when Publius Crassus [under Cæsar] had also traversed it

he saw the metals dug out from near the surface and that the

inhabitants were peaceful, and he proved this sea-passage to be

practicable, if one wished to make it, although it is longer[24] than

that which divides Britain [from the continent]."

[Illustration: Places where tin is found in western Europe (marked with

crosses), and routes of the tin-trade in ancient times (after L. Siret,

1908)]

It is unlikely that the Cassiterides were Cornwall, as has been commonly

supposed, since this peninsula can with difficulty be regarded as a group

of islands; moreover this would not agree with the descriptions which

always mention them as separate from Britain, and usually farther south.

The Scilly Isles, lying far out in the sea, where tin has never been

worked to any great extent, and whose waters are dangerous to navigate,

are out of the question. On the other hand, it may almost be regarded as

certain that the Cassiterides are the same as the "Œstrymnides" (see

below), and these must be looked for on the coast of Gaul. Furthermore tin

is mentioned as "Celtic" by several Greek authorities; in the "Mirabiles

auscultationes" of Aristotle or Pseudo-Aristotle [i. 834, A. 6] it is so

called, and Ephorus (about 340 B.C.) speaks [in Scymnus of Chios] of

Tartessus [i.e., Gadir], "the famous city," as "rich in alluvial tin from

Celtica [Gaul], in gold, as also in copper."[25] It may further be

mentioned that Mela referred to the Cassiterides[26] as "Celtican," which

would mean that they belonged to the north-west coast of Spain, unless it

is confused with Celtic; and in his description of the islands of Europe,

going from south to north, he puts them immediately before "Sena," or the

Île de Seine at the western extremity of Brittany, which means in any case

that they would be to the south of that island. Everything points to the

islands being situated on the south coast of Brittany, and there is much

in favour of Louis Siret's assumption [1908] that they are the islands of

Morbihan ("Les Îles du Morbraz"), west of the mouth of the Loire, exactly

where "Penestin" is situated. This agrees very well, as we shall see

later, with the description of Himilco's voyage to the Œstrymnides. The

free alluvial deposits along the shore in this district, near the mouth of

the Vilaine, still contain a good deal of tin, together with gold and

other precious metals; but in those distant times they may have been very

rich in tin, and as they lie on the very seashore they were naturally

discovered early and became the most important source of tin until they

were partly exhausted. In the meantime the rich tin deposits of Cornwall

had begun to be utilised, and they became in turn the most important,

while the Cassiterides were gradually forgotten.

Diodorus [v. 22] alludes to the tin trade in the following terms: "On

that promontory of Prettanike [Britain] which is called 'Belerion,'

the inhabitants are very hospitable, and they have become civilised by

intercourse with foreign merchants. They produce tin, by actively

working the land which contains it. This is rocky and contains veins

of earth, and by working and smelting the products they obtain pure

metal. This they make into the form of knuckle-bones and bring it to

an island which lies off the coast of Britain and is called 'Ictis.'

For when the intervening space becomes dry at ebb-tide they bring a

quantity of tin to the island in waggons. A curious thing happens with

the islands near the coast between Europe and Britain; for when the

dividing strait is filled at high water they appear as islands, but

when the sea recedes at the ebb and leaves a great space of dry land,

they look like part of the mainland. Here the merchants buy it from

the natives and bring it across to Gaul; but finally they journey on

foot through Gaul, and bring the goods on horses to the mouth of the

river Rhone." In another place [v. 38] he says that the tin is

conveyed on horseback to Massalia and to the Roman commercial town of

Narbo.

Bunbury [1883, ii. p. 197] thinks that "this characteristic account

leaves no reasonable doubt that Ictis was St. Michael's Mount in

Cornwall (Belerion), to which the description precisely answers, and

which contains a small port such as would have been well suited to

ancient traders." The description decidedly does not fit, as some have

thought, the island of Vectis (Wight); moreover the tin would in any

case have had to be brought to the latter by sea from Cornwall, and

not in waggons. It is, however, also possible that we have here some

confusion with the original tin district in Brittany, where such

places as Ictis, with the change between flood and ebb tide, are well

known, from Cæsar's description among others. But as Diodorus did not

know the tin-mines of Brittany, which in his time had lost their

importance, and had heard of tin-mines in Belerion, he transferred to

the latter the whole description which he found in earlier writers.

This supposition may be confirmed by Pliny's statement [Hist. Nat. iv.

16, 104]: "The historian Timæus says that in six days' sailing inwards

from Britain the island of 'Mictis' is reached, in which white lead

(tin) occurs. Thither the Britons sail in vessels of wicker-work,

covered with hides." Originally the passage doubtless read "insulam

Ictis," which by transference of the "m" became "insula Mictis," and

this again has been amended to "insulam Mictis." It is impossible to

identify the description with Vectis, which moreover has just been

mentioned by Pliny, and it is also difficult to understand how it

could be a place in Cornwall, but it is consistent with the tin

district of Brittany.

We do not know how or at what period this tin industry first developed.

Perhaps it was as early as the end of the neolithic period; but it is

improbable that it should have been independently developed by the Iberian

aborigines who lived in the tin districts of Iberia, and doubtless also of

Brittany; it is far more likely to be due to communication with the

Mediterranean through a seafaring, commercial people, and we know of none

other than the Phœnicians. How early they began their widespread commerce

and industry is unknown; but they must have reached this part of the world

long before Gadir was founded by the Tyrians about 1100 B.C. It is

conceivable that in their search for gold and silver they discovered these

deposits of tin and knew how to take advantage of them. As already

remarked, there was as early as 2000 B.C. a continuous communication by

sea along the coasts of western Europe, and it is probable that there

arose at a very early time efficient navigators on the coasts of northern

Spain and Brittany, just those districts which are rich in tin, where

there are many good harbours. For a long time the tin trade was carried on

by sea, southward along the coast to Tarsis in southern Spain; but by

degrees an overland trade-route also came into use, going up the Loire and

down the Rhone to the Mediterranean. This route became known to the

Greeks, and the Phocæan colony Massalia was founded upon it about 600

B.C.; later the Greek colony of Corbilo was possibly founded at its other

extremity, by the mouth of the Loire (?). Later still another trade-route

ran along the Garonne overland to the Roman Narbo (Narbonne). On the

development of the Cornish tin industry, the same routes by sea and land

continued to be used. Thus it was that the tin trade furnished one of the

first and most important steps in the path of the exploration of the

North.

[Sidenote: Amber in ancient times]

When Phaëthon one day had persuaded his father Helios to let him drive the

chariot of the sun across the sky, the horses ran away with him and he

first came too near the vault of heaven and set fire to it, so that the

Milky Way was formed; then he approached too near the earth, set the

mountains on fire, dried up rivers and lakes, burned up the Sahara,

scorched the negroes black, until, to avoid greater disasters in his wild

career, Zeus struck him down with his thunderbolt into the river Eridanus.

His sisters, the daughters of the sun, wept so much over him that the gods

in pity changed them into poplars, and their tears then flowed every year

as amber on the river's banks. "For this reason amber came to be called

'electron,' because the sun has the name of 'Elector.'" In this way the

Greeks, in their poetry, thought that amber was formed. The mythical river

Eridanus, which no doubt was originally in the north (cf. Herodotus), was

later identified sometimes with the Rhone, sometimes with the Po.

Herodotus [iii. 115] says of northern Europe: "I do not suppose that

there is a river which the barbarians call Eridanus, and which flows into

the sea to the northward, from whence amber may come.... For in the first

place the name Eridanus itself shows that it is Hellenic and not

barbarian, and that it has been invented by some poet or other"; and in

the second, he was not able to find any eye-witness who could tell him

about it (cf. p. 27); but in any case he thought that amber as well as tin

came from the uttermost limits of Europe.

[Illustration: Places where amber is found (marked with crosses)]

The most important sources of amber in Europe are the southern coast of

the Baltic, especially Samland, and the west coast of Jutland with the

North Frisian islands. It is also found in small quantities in many places

in western and central Europe, on the Adriatic, in Sicily, in South

Africa, Burmah, the west coast of America, etc. Northern amber, from the

Baltic and the North Sea, is distinguished from other kinds that have been

investigated, by the comparatively large proportion of succinic acid it

contains, and it seems as though almost all that was used in early

antiquity in the Mediterranean countries and in Egypt was derived from the

north. Along the coasts of the Baltic and North Sea the amber is washed by

the waves from the loose strata of the sea-bottom and thrown up on the

beach. When these washed-up lumps were found by the fishers and hunters of

early times they naturally attracted them by their brilliance and colour

and by the facility with which they could be cut. It is no wonder,

therefore, that amber was used as early as the Stone Age for amulets and

ornaments by the people on the Baltic and North Seas, and spread from

thence over the whole of the North. In those distant times articles of

amber were still rare in the South; but in the Bronze Age, in proportion

as gold and bronze reach the north, they become rarer there, but more

numerous farther south. In the passage-graves of Mycenæ (fourteenth to

twelfth centuries B.C.) there are many of them, as also in Sparta at the

time of the Dorian migration (twelfth to tenth centuries B.C.; cf. p. 14).

It is evident that amber was the medium of exchange wherewith the people

of the North bought the precious metals from the South, and in this way it

comes that the two classes of archæological finds have changed their

localities. The neolithic ornaments of amber at Corinth, already referred

to, the amber beads of the Fifth Dynasty in Egypt, and those of the

neolithic period in Spain, show, however, if they are northern, that this

connection between South and North goes back a very long way. But the

Greek tribes among whom the Iliad originated do not appear to have known

amber, as it is not mentioned in the poem, and it is first named in the

more recent portions of the Odyssey (put into writing in the eighth

century B.C.). Among the jewels which the Phœnician merchant offered to

the Queen of Syria was "the golden necklace hung with pieces of amber"

[Od. xv. 460]. We must therefore believe that the Phœnicians were the

middlemen from whom the Greeks obtained it at that time. But it was not so

much esteemed by the Greeks of the classical period as it became later,

and they rejected it in their art industries, for which reason it is

seldom mentioned by Greek authors. Thales of Miletus (600 B.C.) discovered

that when rubbed it attracted other bodies, and from this important

discovery made so long ago has sprung the knowledge of that force which

dominates our time, and which has been named from the Greek word for

amber, "electron."

Among the Romans of the Empire this substance was so highly prized that

Pliny tells us [xxxvii., chap. 12] that "a human likeness made of it,

however small, exceeds the price of a healthy living person." This was

both on account of its beauty and of its occult properties; when worn as

an amulet it was able to ward off secret poisons, sorcery and other evils.

It therefore naturally became an article that was in great demand, and for

which merchants made long voyages.

It has been thought that the North Sea amber came into the southern market

before that of the Baltic, and as the Eridanus of the myth was sometimes

taken for the Rhone and sometimes for the Po, it was believed that in

early times amber was carried up the Rhine and across to both these

rivers, later also up the Elbe to the Adriatic [cf. Schrader, 1901,

"Bernstein"]. It was thought that the archæological finds also favoured

this theory; but it must still be regarded as doubtful, and it is scarcely

probable that the Phœnicians obtained it from the mouths of the Rhone and

the Po, while they may have brought it by sea at an early period. By what

routes amber was distributed in the earliest times is still unknown.

[Illustration: Phœnician warship, according to an Assyrian representation]

[Sidenote: Voyages of the Phœnicians]

Even though the Phœnicians were for the most part a commercial and

industrial people, who were not specially interested in scientific

research, there can be no doubt that by their distant voyages they

contributed much geographical knowledge to their age, and in many ways

they influenced Greek geography, especially through Miletus, which from

the beginning was partly a Phœnician colony, and where the first Greek

school of geographers, the Ionian school, developed. Thales of Miletus was

himself probably a Semite. How far they attained on their voyages is

unknown. Hitherto no certain relics of Phœnician colonies have been found

along the coasts of western Europe farther north than south-west Spain

(Tarsis), and there is no historically certain foundation for the

supposition that these seafaring merchants of antiquity, the Phœnicians,

Carthaginians and Gaditanians, on their voyages beyond the Pillars of

Hercules and northwards along the coasts of western Europe, should have

penetrated beyond the tin country and as far as the waters of northern

Europe, even to Scandinavia and the Baltic, whence they themselves might

have brought amber.[27] But a hypothesis of this sort cannot be disproved,

and is by no means improbable. Everything points to the Phœnicians having

been uncommonly capable seamen with good and swift-sailing ships; and a

seafaring people who achieved the far more difficult enterprise of

circumnavigating Africa, and of sailing southwards along its west coast

with whole fleets to found colonies, cannot have found it impossible to

sail along the west and north coast of Europe, where there are plenty of

natural harbours. It would then be natural for them to try to reach the

North Sea and the Baltic, if they expected to find the precious amber

there, and on this point they certainly had information from the merchants

who brought it either by land or by sea. It has already been remarked that

it is first mentioned in history as a Phœnician article of commerce.[28]

It may be supposed that the Phœnicians at an early period obtained amber

from their harbours on the Black Sea;[29] but after having pursued this

prosperous carrying-trade from their harbours here and in the west, it is

not improbable that they themselves tried to penetrate to the amber

countries with their ships.[30] The Phœnicians, however, tried to keep

their trade-routes secret from their dangerous and more warlike rivals the

Greeks, and it is therefore not surprising that no mention of these routes

should be extant, even if they really undertook such voyages; but it is

undeniably more remarkable still that no certain trace of them has been

found along the coasts of western Europe.

[Sidenote: Himilco's voyage, 500 B.C.]

The only thing we know is that about the year 500 B.C. the Carthaginians

are said to have sent out an expedition under Himilco through the Pillars

of Hercules and thence northwards along the coast. This is the first

northern sea voyage of which mention is to be found in literature. At that

time Tyre, the mother-city of Gadir, had been destroyed. Until then she

had controlled the trade of the west. It was natural that Gadir in her

isolated position should seek support from Carthage, which was now rising

into power. To strengthen her trade communications, therefore, this

flourishing city sent out Hanno's great expedition along the west coast of

Africa, and Himilco to the tin country in the north. Himilco seems to have

written an account of the journey; but of this all that has been preserved

is a few casual pieces of information in a poem ("Ora Maritima") by the

late Roman author Rufus Festus Avienus[31] (of the end of the fourth

century A.D.). The only other place where Himilco's name is mentioned is

in Pliny [Hist. Nat. ii. 67, 169], who merely says that he made a voyage

to explore the outer coast of Europe, contemporary with Hanno's voyage to

the south along the west coast of Africa, and in addition he names him in

the list of his authorities. But Pliny himself probably never saw his

work; it cannot be seen that he has made use of it.

It is true that Avienus makes a pretence of having used Himilco's original

account, but certainly he had never seen it. He may have utilised a Greek

authority of about the time of the Christian era [cf. Marx, 1895]. This

again was a compound of Greek tales, of which a part may have been taken

from a Punic source, but of the latter no trace is found in any other

known classical writer, with the exception of Pliny. Unfortunately the

information given us by Avienus shows little intelligence in the use of

his authorities, and his poem is often obscure.

In the description of the coast of western Europe [vv. 90-129] we read:

"And here the projecting ridge raises its head--the older age called

it 'Œstrymnis'--and all the high mass of rocky ridge turns mostly

towards the warm south wind. But beneath the top of this promontory

the Œstrymnian Bay opens out before the eyes of the inhabitants. In

the midst of this rise the islands which are called Œstrymnides,

scattered widely about, and rich in metals, in tin and in lead. Here

live a multitude of men with enterprise and active industry, all

having continually commercial interests; they plough in skilful

fashion far and wide the foaming sea ['fretum,' literally, strait],

and the currents of monster-bearing Ocean with their small boats. For

these people do not know how to fit together [literally, weave] keels

of fir or maple; they do not bend their craft with deal, in the usual

way; but strange to say, they make their ships of hides sewed

together, and often traverse the vast sea with the help of hides. Two

days' voyage from thence lay the great island, which the ancients

called 'the Holy Island,'[32] and it is inhabited by the people of

Hierne [i.e., Ireland] far and wide, and near to it again extends the

island of Albion. And it was the custom of the men of Tartessus to

trade to the borders of the Œstrymnides, also colonists from Carthage

and the many who voyage between the Pillars of Hercules visited these

seas. The Carthaginian Himilco assures us that these seas can scarcely

be sailed through in four months, as he has himself related of his

experience on his voyage; thus no breeze drives the ship forward, so

dead is the sluggish wind of this idle sea. He also adds that there is

much seaweed among the waves, and that it often holds the ship back

like bushes. Nevertheless he says that the sea has no great depth, and

that the surface of the earth is barely covered by a little water. The

monsters of the sea move continually hither and thither, and the wild

beasts swim among the sluggish and slowly creeping ships."

It may be difficult to decide how much of this is really derived from

Himilco. The name "Œstrymnis" is not found elsewhere in literature, and

may be taken from him.[33] The supposition that it was Cape Finisterre and

that the Œstrymnic Bay ("sinus Œstrymnicus") was the Bay of Biscay is

improbable; a bay so open and wide could scarcely have been described in

terms which a Latin author would have rendered by "sinus"; besides which

there would be difficulties with the Œstrymnides which were widely spread

therein. Œstrymnis is certainly in Brittany, and since it "turns chiefly

towards the warm south wind," we may suppose it to be a headland on the

south coast. That the Œstrymnic Bay opens out beneath this headland ("sub

hujus") agrees with all that we know of it. As already stated, the

tin-producing Œstrymnides are undoubtedly the Cassiterides, which may

probably be the islands in the bay by the mouth of the Vilaine and

Quiberon, on the south side of Brittany, where tin occurs.

It is just in this district, at the mouth of the Loire, that we find

the Veneti as the only people famous for seamanship in ancient times

in these parts. But, according to Cæsar's valuable description, they

had strong, seaworthy ships, built wholly of oak and with leather

sails. This seems scarcely to tally with the statement that the people

of the Œstrymnides sailed the sea in boats of hide, the coracles of

the Celts, which is also confirmed by Pliny's statement [xxxiv. c. 47]

that "according to fabulous tales tin was brought in ships of

wicker-work sewed round with hides from islands in the Atlantic

Ocean." Either the Veneti must have acquired the art of shipbuilding

after the voyage of Himilco--perhaps, indeed, through their

intercourse with Carthaginians and Gaditanians--or else we must

believe that the statement in Avienus rests upon a misinterpretation

of the original authorities, and that the flowery language really

means that the ships were not built of fir, maple or spruce, but of

oak, the omission of which is striking.

Thus a comparison of the various statements points definitely to Brittany

as the place where we must look for the tin-bearing islands. That it was

two days' voyage thence to the holy island of Hierne, and that near to it

lay the land of Albion, also agrees; but too much weight must not be laid

upon this, as we do not know for certain whether this is really derived

from Himilco.

The sea-monsters may be taken as accessories put in to make the voyage

terrible; but on the other hand they may be the great whales of the Bay of

Biscay, of which there were many in those days, before whaling was

undertaken there. The exaggerated description of the length and

difficulties of the voyage fits in badly with the information that the men

of Tartessus and the Carthaginians were in the habit of trading there. How

much of this is due to misunderstanding of the original, or to downright

interpolation, we do not know. With the universal desire of the

Carthaginians and Phœnicians to keep the monopoly of their trade-routes,

Himilco may have added this to frighten others. It is also possible that

he made a longer voyage in four months, but that Avienus's authority gave

an obscure and bungled account of it.

The description of the shallow water, and of the seaweed which holds the

ships back, etc., seems to correspond to the actual conditions. In another

part of the poem something similar occurs, where we read [v. 375]:

"Outside the Pillars of Hercules along the side of Europe the

Carthaginians once had villages and towns. They were in the habit of

building their fleets with flatter bottoms, since a broader ship could

float upon the surface of a shallower sea."[34] One is reminded of the

shallow west coast of France, where the tide lays large tracts alternately

dry (covered with seaweed) and under water, so that it might well be said

that "the surface of the earth is barely covered by a little water." Ebb

and flood were, of course, an unknown phenomenon in the Mediterranean. In

this respect also the description suits the voyage to Brittany, where the

sea is shallow. It has been asserted that the expression "seaweed among

the waves" might show that Himilco had been near to or in the Sargasso

Sea; but there is no reason whatever for supposing this; the explanation

given above is more natural, besides which the Sargasso Sea could hardly

be described as shallow and as lying on the way to Œstrymnis.[35]

On the Atlantic Ocean Avienus has the following [vv. 380-389]:

"Farther to the west from these Pillars there is boundless sea.

Himilco relates that the ocean extends far, none has visited these

seas; none has sailed ships over these waters, because propelling

winds are lacking on these deeps, and no breeze from heaven helps the

ship. Likewise because darkness ['caligo' == darkness, usually owing

to fog] screens the light of day with a sort of clothing, and because

a fog always conceals the sea, and because the weather is perpetually

cloudy with thick atmosphere."

If we may believe Avienus that this description is derived from Himilco,

it possesses great interest, since here and in the description (above) of

the voyage to Œstrymnis we find the same ideas of the western sea and of

the uttermost sea which appear later, after Pytheas's time, in the

accounts of the thick and sluggish sea without wind round Thule, and in

this case it shows that already at that early period ideas of this sort

had developed. Müllenhoff [1870, pp. 78, 93 f.], it is true, takes it for

granted that these descriptions in Avienus cannot be derived from Himilco,

but his reasons for so doing do not appear convincing. Aristotle says

["Meteorologica," ii. 1, 14] that the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules

was muddy and shallow, and little stirred by the winds. This shows clearly

enough that ideas of that kind were current among the Greeks even before

Pytheas, and they must doubtless have got them from the Phœnicians.

That some very ancient authority is really the basis of the description of

the west coast of Europe as far as the Œstrymnides, which we find in

Avienus, is proved again by the fact that the regions farther to the north

or north-east are clearly enough represented as entirely unknown, when we

read [vv. 129-145]:

"If any one dares to steer his boat from the Œstrymnic Islands in the

direction where the air is cold at the axis of Lycaon,[36] he will

arrive at the country of the Ligurians, which is void of inhabitants.

For by the host of the Celts and by numerous battles it has lately

been rendered void. And the expelled Ligurians came, as fate often

drives people away, to the districts where there is hardly anything

but bush. Many sharp stones are there in those parts, and cold rocks,

and the mountains rise threateningly to heaven. And the refugees lived

for a long time in narrow places among rocks away from the sea. For

they were afraid of waves [i.e., afraid to come near the coast] by

reason of the old danger. Later, when security had given them

boldness, peace and quietness persuaded them to leave their high

positions, and now they descended to places by the sea."

Müllenhoff thinks [1870, pp. 86 f.] that this mention of the expulsion of

the Ligurians by the Celts is necessarily a late addition by a man from

the district of Massalia where the Ligurians lived; but it seems more

probable that the name is here used as a common designation for the

pre-Celtic people who dwelt in these north-western regions; and if it is

the north side of Brittany which is here spoken of, the Ligurians of

southern Gaul will not be so far away after all. It is clear that in

ancient times the people of west and north-west Europe were called

"Ligyans." Hesiod mentioned them as the people of the west in

contradistinction to the Scythians of the east [cf. Strabo, vii. 300], and

in the legend of Phaëthon occurs the Ligyan king Cycnus at the mouth of

the amber-producing river Eridanus, which doubtless was originally

supposed to fall into the sea on the north or north-west. We may interpret

it as meaning that the aborigines, Ligyans or Ligurians, were driven by

the immigrant Celts up into the bush-covered mountainous parts of

Brittany. In any case this passage in Avienus, which assumes that the

districts farther north are unknown, is a strong proof that his

information is ancient and derived from Himilco, and that the latter

penetrated as far as the north coast of Brittany, or the south of Britain,

but no farther.

[Illustration]