demanded open shrines, and a circle of rude granite obelisks, guarded the primitive sanctuary from all profane intrusion. Or if we look beyond natural circumstances, and should conclude that there would appear to be more of premeditation and design, in the choice of their materials, and in the forms employed; it might thence be inferred that the notions which led to their erection were not of indigenous growth, but were brought from other lands, by the original settlers. Since, also, points of resemblance have been observed between these monuments and such as are found in eastern countries, or are known to have existed there in the earliest ages, for purposes which are recorded, although they do not establish the hypothesis of the colonization of Britain from the east, they certainly favour an opinion which is also countenanced by tradition, and which no less than eight centuries since had assumed a shape sufficiently definite to be preserved in one of the most valuable documents of mediaval times, the Saxon Chronicle,-which states that "the first inhabitants of this country were Britons, who having come from Armenia established themselves in the southern parts of Britain." The legendary fable of the voyage of Brutus, from the Mediterranean to the shores of Devonshire, his landing at Totness, and overthrow of his gigantic antagonists at Plymouth, however unworthy of credit as to details, deserve consideration, as indicating some substantial truths, just as shadows, however distorted and exaggerated, are proofs of an actual substance. And if there is any just foundation for the ingenious theories of Mr. Harcourt, that the Albion of Aristotle* (Britain) was one of the isles of the Blessed, of antiquity; the uakapwv vñoos of Lycophron (according to Tzetzes), that the celebrated Atlantis may be more reasonably sought for in the British isles than elsewhere, that it was here that the slumbers of the Titanian Kronos were guarded by the hundred-handed Briarcus, as reported by Plato, that the island which was the abode of Neptune, was Britain, † and * De Mundo, c. 3. I question whether the composer of the once popular sea-song, ever imagined that he could boast such high authority as the celebrated Athenian philosopher for regarding our island as the contemplated residence of the god of ocean. Daddy Neptune one day unto Freedom did say If e'er I should live upon dry land, The spot I should hit on would be little Britain, Οὕτω δὴ και την νῆσον Ποσείδων την Ατλαντίδα λαχων.-PLATO CRITIAS. that the Hesperides to which Hercules travelled to fetch the golden apples for Juno, were also the same islands, since Apollodorus expressly says that the Hesperian apples were not in Libya but at the Atlas, among the Hyperboreans,*—then shall we conclude, that there is more cause for believing that there existed a much earlier communication by sea, between our islands and the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, than has been generally supposed, and that this may have partly arisen from the circumstance of the original colonization of the British isles having taken place by a voyage through the Straits of Gibraltar. The expedition of Brutus is alleged to have been undertaken about the year 1100, B.C., and in the first century after the Trojan war, from which period, Britain is supposed to have taken its name from that successful invader. These legendary tales may preserve the memorial of a real descent, by some foreign chief, about the time in question, and appear to intimate that the invaders had to encounter the opposition of a fierce and warlike people. Hence these traditionary legends evidently assume that this island must have been peopled (it may be presumed) for some ages, anterior to the reported landing of the Trojan adventurers in the estuary of the Dart, and their conflicts at the mouth of the Plym-both Dartmoor rivers, and therefore identifying these legends with the venue of this treatise. But it is far more probable that the truth of these fables will be found in a Tyrian expedition, rather than in a Trojan, when impartial history,† regarding the claimants with equal eye, (Tros, Tyriusve, nullo discrimine,) steps in to decide the rival claims, since we are assured that the enterprising traders of Phoenicia had brought tin by sea, from some western country before the time of Homer, and that it is not more probable that Brutus, a great grandson of Æneas, ever made an expedition to Totness, and gave his name to Britain, than that he founded the city of Tours, in Gaul, as gravely asserted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Much less fanciful is the etymology which would derive the original designation of our island, with the learned Bochart, Sammes, and others, from two Phoenician words-Barat-anac, the *Doct. of Deluge ii., 150, 151, 152. "I am not for wholly rejecting," says Bishop Nicolson, "all that is contained in that history, believing there is somewhat of truth in it, under a mighty heap of monkish forgeries."-English Histor. Library. London, 1714, p. 37. land of tin, translated in after-times, by the Greeks, Cassiterides ; since it is so far supported by historical evidence; as we learn from classical writers, that the Phoenicians* were the earliest traders upon record, to the tin counties beyond the pillars of Hercules, in the Hyperborean ocean. The period being determined, about which the Phoenicians first visited Britain, we shall obtain some historical data for calculating the æra of the aboriginal relics of Dartmoor. We learn from antiquity with what jealous vigilance they guarded the lucrative monopoly of the tin trade. The account of the Phoenician shipmaster, who ran his vessel aground, to prevent his course from being traced by a Roman galley, and his reimbursement by his grateful countrymen, is well known. It is also recorded that the Greeks of Marseilles, who had been long anxious to obtain a share in this traffic, were at last successful in their attempts to discover the Cassiterides, which became known to them B.C. 330. But Herodotus, more than a century before, whilst he confesses his ignorance of the precise situation of the Cassiterides, mentions tin, without any question, as the product of the extreme regions of Western Europe, with which he was unacquainted. † Tin was one of the commodities, in the fairs of Tyre, enumerated by the prophet Ezekiel, (B.C. 595,) and was known to the Jews in the time when Isaiah prophesied, (B.C. 760.) If therefore tin was generally recognised by the common consent of antiquity, as a product of the Cassiterides, and an import of the Phoenicians, we are carried back to the age of Homer, who mentions the metal as forming an ingredient in the manufacture of armour in those early ages of the world. But if, with the apprehension of an anachronism, in this particular, we hesitate to go back to the siege of Troy, (1190 B.C. to 1200,) there can be no difficulty in admitting that a voyage from the Levant to Britain might have been accomplished at so remote a period as about one thousand years before the Christian æra. The learned Heeren fixes the flourishing period of Tyre and the Phoenician states, from 1000 to 332 B.C., nor does it seem Bishop Nicolson contemptuously dismisses the speculations of Sammes about "the Phoenicians his only darlings;" but subsequent researches of the learned have shown that opinions which have been entertained from the times of Nennius, and were advocated by Bochart, are not to be summarily disposed of, without investigation, as the baseless reveries of an enthusiastic, but ill-informed antiquary. "Neither am I acquainted with the Cassiterides Islands from whence tin comes to us."-HEROD. Thalia iii., 115. Gronov. without the bounds of probability to suppose, that their enterprising navigators possessed, even in those early times, the means, as they doubtless had the desire, of extending their policy, of foreign colonization, even to the remote isles of Britain. A prominent feature in that policy was the forming of their mercantile settlements on islands and peninsulas. We know that they pushed their discoveries, by coasting Africa, in a southern course, after passing the Pillars of Hercules. There does not therefore appear any sufficient reason for questioning the probability of their having (as early as the reign of David or Solomon) voyaged northwards along the coasts of Spain and Gaul, until they reached the islands of Baratanac, the country of tin. The aboriginal period of our history, characterized by the monuments above enumerated, may therefore be regarded as commencing before the arrival of the Phoenician mariners, and as extending over the time when the tin trade was carried on by them, and subsequently by the Phocæan-Greeks, from Marseilles, previously to the invasion of the Romans. Among those relics, examples of two kinds of fortresses have been mentioned. Such as that of Prestonbury, evidencing more artificial preparation than the simple circumvallation of Grimspound, may with great propriety be assigned to a period when the rudiments of barbarian castrametation had been improved by intercourse with the classical nations. But proofs of the presence of these enterprising navigators may be traced with far more certainty in the vestiges of works,-more congenial to the commercial spirit of the merchant-princes of Tyre and Sidon, and more germane to the views with which they dispatched their argosies, to brave the terrors of the Hyperborean Ocean,-in the remains of primitive mining operations, which are still to be found in various parts of the moor. Polwhele remarks that the parishes of Manaton, Kingsteignton, and Teigngrace, present examples of these antient works. The two latter lie beyond our moorland district, towards the estuary of the Teign, but the former is one of the border parishes of the Forest, and contains many of the remains in question; which, although it is impossible to assign them any date, with even an approach to histo To say nothing of Cornwall, there are numberless stream works on Dartmoor and its vicinities, which have been forsaken for ages. In the parishes of Manaton, Kingsteignton, and Teigngrace, are many old tin-works of this kind, which the inhabitants attribute to that period when wolves and winged serpents were no strangers to the hills or the vallies.-Histor. Views of Devon, p. 110. rical certainty, have been generally conjectured to be the relics of British operations, under the direction of the Phoenician traders. Speaking of these primitive stream works, Polwhele goes on to observe that "the Bovey Heathfield hath been worked in the same manner. And indeed all the vallies from the Heathfield to Dartmoor bear the traces of shoding and streaming, which I doubt not was British or Phoenician." Not only in the parish of Manaton, but in those of Chagford, Walkhampton, Sheepstor, and Lydford, (the Forest,) have I noticed many similar remains, all in situations favourable for the peculiar operations of streaming. And without controverting the opinions of our zealous antiquary, that some of these may present veritable examples of forsaken mines of the British and Phoenician period, we cannot suppose that of all the vestiges of these antient works, none are to be assigned to a later age. The nature of the case would rather suggest the inference, that as mining operations have been carried on in our county from the times of the Phœnicians downwards, so the existing relics, if discrimination were possible, would be attributable to different adventurers, and to successive ages and generations. Leaving those speculations therefore in the obscurity and uncertainty wherein time has enveloped them, and which can never be dispelled, let us proceed to collect the few scattered rays of light which antient history casts upon the mining operations and commercial transactions of the period in question, as far as they come within the plan of the present treatise. Britain had long been regarded as isolated from the rest of mankind, no less by its remote and insular position, but by the fierce and intractable character of its inhabitants-toto divisos orbe Britannos. The jealous policy of the Phoenicians would doubtless be directed to foster this opinion as much as possible, to which they themselves had probably first given currency, from the desire of preserving in all its integrity their much valued monopoly of the British commerce. Hence as we have seen in the case of Herodotus, little was known by antient authors on the subject of the Cassiterides, beyond the fact of their existence, amidst the fabled horrors of the Hyperborean sea. But after the Greeks of Marseilles had succeeded in obtaining a knowledge of the country, and a share in its valuable trade, the philosophers and historians of antiquity had the means of acquiring some information, on a subject of no little interest, which at no distant |