COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

494 COSMOS.
./Estii on the Baltic, owed its origin to the daring per*
severance of Pho3nician coasting traders. Its subsequent
extension affords a remarkable example in the history of the
contemplation of the universe, of the influence which may be
exercised on the establishment of international intercourse,
and on the extension of the knowledge of large tracts of land,
by a predilection for even a single product. In the same
manner as the Phocaean Massillians conveyed British tin
through the whole extent of Gaul to the shores of the Rhone,
ambcT passed from people to people through Germany and
the territory of the Celts, on both sides of the Alps, to the
Paclus, and through Pannonia to the Borysthenes. This in-
trade along the whole coast of Skage, as far as the Netherlands, Werlauff,
Bidrag til den nordiske, Ravliandels Historic (Kopenh. 1835). In
Tacitus, and not in Pliny, we find the first acquaintance with the glessum
of the shores of the Baltic, in the land of the JEstui (JEstuonnn
gentium), and of the Yenedi, concerning whom the great philologist Shaffarik
(Slawisclie Alterthumer, th. i. s. 151-165), is uncertain whether
they were Slaves or Gemini. The more active direct connection with
the Samland coast of the Baltic, and with the Esthonians, by means of the
overland route through Pannonia, by Carnuntum, which was first followed
by a Roman knight under Nero, appears to me to have belonged
to the later times of the Eoman Caesars (Voigt, Gesch. Preusseris, bd. i.
s. 85). The relations between the Prussian coasts and the Greek colo-
nies on the Black Sea are proved by fine coins, struck probably
before the
eighty-fifth Olympiad, which have been recently found in the ISTetz district
(Lewezow, in the Abhandl. der Berl. Akad. der Wiss. aits dem
Jalir 1833, s. 181-224). The electron, the sun-stone of the very-
ancient mythus of the Eridanus (Plin. xxxvii. cap. 2),
the amber stranded
or buried on the coast, was, no doubt, frequently brought to the south,
both by land and by sea, from very different districts. The " amber
which was found buried at two places in Scythia was, in part, very darkcoloured."
Amber is still collected near Kaltschedansk, not far from
Kamensk, on the Ural; and we have obtained, at Katharinenburg,
fragments imbedded in lignite. See G. Rose, Reise nach dem Ural,
bd. i. s. 481 ; and Sir Roderick Murchison, in the Geology of Russia,
vol. i. p. 366. The petrified wood which frequently surrounds the amber
had early attracted the attention of the ancients. This resin, which was,
at that time, regarded as so precious a product, was ascribed either to
the black poplar (according to the Chian Scymnus, v. 396, p. 367,
Letronne), or to a tree of the cedar or pine genus (according to Mithridates,
in Plin. xxxvii. cap. 2 and 3). The recent admirable investigations
of Prof. Gbppert, at Breslau, have shown that the conjecture of the
Roman collector was the more correct. Respecting the petrified ambertree
(Pinitessuccinifer) belonging to an extinct vegetation, see Berendt
Organisclie Reste im Bernstein, bd. i. abth. 1, 1845, s. 89.