from another quarter. The
course of the Danube is under notice, and this is what is said:--

"The river Ister, beginning with the Kelts, and the city of Pyrene,
flows so as to cut Europe in half. But the Kelts are beyond the Pillars
of Hercules; and they join the _Kynesii_, who are the furthest
inhabitants of Europe towards the setting-sun."--ii. 33.

"The Ister flows through the whole of Europe, beginning with the Kelts
who, next to the _Kynetae_, dwell furthest west in Europe."--iv. 49.

The _Kynetae_ have reasonably been identified with the _Veneti_ of Caesar,
whose native name is _Gwynedd_, and whose locality, in Western Brittany,
exactly coincides with the notice of Herodotus. If so, the name is
Gallic, and (as such) in all probability transmitted to Herodotus from
Gallic informants. So that there were two routes for the earliest
information about Britain--the overland line (so to say), whereon the
intelligence was of Gallic origin; and the way of the Mediterranean,
wherein the facts were due to the merchants of Tyre, Carthage, or Gades.
Direct information, too, may have been derived from the Greeks of
Marseilles, though the evidence for this is wanting.

The two foremost writers to whose texts the preceding observations have
been preliminary, are Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, both of whom lived
during the reign of Augustus, too early for any information over and
above that which was to be found in the pages of Caesar. Yet as each
contains much that Caesar never told, and, perhaps, never knew, the
immediate authorities must be supposed to be geographical writers of
Alexandria, one of whom, Eratosthenes, is quoted by Caesar himself; the
remoter ones being the Ph[oe]nician and Gallic traders. The thoroughly
Ph[oe]nician origin of the statement of these two authors is well
collected from the following extracts, which we must consider to be as
little descriptive of the Britannia of Caesar and the Romans, as they are
of the Britannia of the year 51 B.C. Caesar's Britain is Kent, in the
last half-century before the Christian era. Diodorus' Britain is
Cornwall, some 300 years earlier. "They who dwell near the promontory of
Britain, which is called Belerium, are singularly fond of strangers;
and, from their intercourse with foreign merchants, civilized in their
habits. These people obtain the tin by skilfully working the soil which
produces it; this being rocky, has earthy interstices, in which, working
the ore and then