A DISSERTATION ON THE COMMERCE CARRIED ON IN VERY REMOTE AGES BY THE PHOENICIANS, CARTHAGINIANS, AND GREEKS, WITH THE BRITISH ISLANDS, FOR THEIR ANCIENT STAPLE OF TIN; AND ON THEIR EXTENSIVE BARTER OF THAT COMMODITY FOR THOSE OF THEIR INDIAN CONTINENT; THE WHOLE CONFIRMED BY EXTRACTS FROM THE INSTITUTES OF MENU, AND INTERSPERSED WITH STRICTURES ON THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF NAVIGATION AND SHIP-BUILDING IN THE EAST. A DISSERTATION, &c. GENERAL ARGUMENT. The Hercules of Tyre probably the same Personage as the Chaldean and Indian Belus.Hercules, under the Name of Melicartus, asserted by the Ancients to have first explored the Cassiterides for Tin.-And the Name BELERIUM, in Consequence, given by the ancient Geographers to the western Extremity of Cornwall.-A retrospective Survey taken of the Sciences and Commerce for which Phenicia was most celebrated.-Some Account of their Trade to Spain, and the immense Riches anciently obtained from the Mines of that Country-The Bullion of Spain transported in Phænician Vessels by Way of the Mediterranean and Red Seas to India.Their Communication from Gadira,the modern Cadiz, Cadiz, with the British Islands.-An Account of the Tin-Mines of Cornwall, of the different Kinds of Ore found there by the Miners, and their Method of smelting and refining it; with a History of the Tin-Trade, during those most ancient Periods.-Its Importance to the Country at large insisted on, and the Policy and Wisdom of the Court of Directors in reviving this interesting Branch of British Commerce with India, stated as the just Subject of national Applause.-The successive Voyages undertaken by the Carthaginians and Greeks to Britain, on the same Errand, detailed.-The principal Articles that formed the ancient Commerce of Egypt and Persia enumerated.—The Origin and gradual Progress of the Science of Navigation and Ship-Building in Asia. SHALL commence this Dissertation and Ithe observations which I have to offer re lative to the ancient commerce carried on between the natives of this island and those of Asia, but more particularly the Phoenicians, by informing the reader, that the oldest classical appellation which we have for the extreme western point of Cornwall, called by us us the Land's End, is BELERIUM, mispelt indeed Bolerium in Ptolemy's Geography,* but restored to its right orthography by Diodorus Siculus, who writes the word Belerium. Ancient British writers of the first eminence translate this word, "the Promontory of Hercules," and both the original term and the translation bring back to our recollection that first Assyrian and Indian Belus, who, a celebrated Pagan writer, even the wise Cicero himself, affirms, was the true Hercules. Now that Hercules was the founder of Tyre; and the Tyrians themselves, in the time of Herodotus, boasted that their city was then two thousand three hundred years old, which account, though exaggerated by a few centuries, is much nearer the truth than the vaunted origin assigned to most of the great cities of Asia, and is in a great degree consonant with the hypothesis here contended for. That hypothesis is still more strongly confirmed by a retrospective glance on the mode of superstition predominant in Tyre; for the two principal deities, anciently worshipped in * See Ptolomæi Geograph. lib. iii. cap. 3. ‡ Ibid. lib. ii. cap. 43. Phoenicia, |