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Celts of Europe,-afforded the refuge from Gothic invasion* which they required. It has has been shown clearly, from the names of its mountains and rivers,-those unerring memorials of an aboriginal race, that the first inhabitants of the country now called Wales must have been a people whose language was the same with that of the Irish, as the mountains and waters of that noble country are called by Irish names. At what time the Belge, the chief progenitors of the English nation, began to dispossess the original Celtic inhabitants, is beyond the historian's power to ascertain; as is also the question, whether those Belge or Fir-bolgs, who are known to have passed over into Ireland, went directly from Gaul, or were an offset of those who invaded Britain.

But however some of the ingredients composing their population may have become, in the course of time, common to both countries, it appears most probable that their primitive inhabitants were derived from entirely different sources; and that, while Gaul poured her Celts upon the shores of Britain, the population of Ireland was supplied from the coasts of Celtic Spain. It is, at least, certain, that, between these two latter countries, relations of affinity had been, at a very early period, established; and that those western coasts of Spain, to which the Celtic tribes were driven, and where afterwards Phoenician colonies established themselves, were the very regions from whence this communication with Ireland was maintained.

The objections raised to this supposed origin and intercourse, on the ground of the rude state of navigation in those days, are deserving of but little attention. It was not lightly, or without observation, such a writer as Tacitus asserted, that the first colonizing expeditions were performed by water, not by land; and however his opinion, to its whole extent, may be questioned, the result of inquiry into the affinities of nations seems to have established, that at no time, however remote, has the interposition of sea presented much obstacle to the migratory dispositions of mankind. The history, indeed, of the Polynesian races, and of their common origin-showing to what an immense extent, over the great ocean, even the simplest barbarians have found the means of wafting the first rudiments of a people-should incline us to regard with less skepticism those coasting and, in general, land-locked voyages, by which most of the early colonization of Europe was effected;-at a period, too, when the Phoenicians, with far more knowledge, it is probable, of the art of navigation, than modern assumption gives them credit for, were to be seen in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, the Atlantic,-every where upon the waters. With respect to the facilities of early intercourse between Ireland and Spain, the distance from Cape Ortegal to Cape Clear, which lie almost opposite to each other, north and south, is not more than 150 leagues,-two thirds of which distance, namely, as far as the island of Ushant, might all have been performed within sight of land. Reserving, however, all farther investigation into this point, till we come to treat of the different colonies of Ireland, I shall here endeavour to collect such information respecting her early fortunes as the few, but pregnant, notices scattered throughout antiquity afford.

With one important exception, it is from early Greek writers alone that our first

*Without entering here into the still undecided question, as to whether the Belge were Celts or Goths, I shall merely observe, that the fair conclusion from the following passage of Cæsar is, that this people were of a Gothic or Teutonic descent.

"Cum ab his quæreret, quæ civitates quantæque in armis essent, et quid in bello possent, sic reperiebat; plerosque Belgas esse ortos ab Germanis; Rhenumque antiquitus transductos, propter loci fertilitatem ibi consedisse; Gallosque, qui ea loca incolerent, expulisse."-De Bell. Gall. lib. ii. c. 4.

Lhuyd's Preface to his Irish Dictionary, in the Appendix to Nicholson's Historical Library.-Lhuyd extends his remark to England as well as Wales. "Whoever takes notice," he says, "of a great number of the names of the rivers and mountains throughout the king lom, will find no reason to doubt but the Irish must have been the inhabitants when those names were imposed on them." In other words, the first inhabitants of Britain and Wales were Celts of Gael.

The author of Mona Antiqua has, without intending it, confirmed the truth of Lhuyd's remark, by stating that the vestiges of old habitations still to be seen on the heaths and hills of Anglesey, are called, to this day, Cyttie'r Gwyddelod, or the Irishmen's Cottages. These words, too, it appears (see Preface to O'Brien's Irish Dictionary,)" should more properly and literally be rendered Irishmen's habitations, or seats; for the Irish word Cathair, of which Ceitir is a corruption, signifies either a city or town, or habitation."

That the Irish did not consider themselves as being of Gaulish origin, appears from their having uni. formly used the word Gall to express a foreigner, or one speaking a different language.

§ Nec terra olim, sed classibus advehebantur, qui mutare sedes quærebant.-German. c. 2.

"A comparison of their languages (those of the Polynesian races) has furnished a proof, that all the most remote insular nations of the Great Ocean derived their origin from the same quarter, and are nearly related to some tribes of people inhabiting a part of the Indian continent, and the Isles of the Indian Archi. pelago."-Pritchard's Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations.

Dr. Rennel, in noticing some doubts respecting the circumnavigation of Africa by the Egyptians, says sensibly, "Since so many of these (ancient) authorities concur in the behalf that Africa had been sailed round, we cannot readily guess why it should be doubted at present, unless the moderns wish to appropriate to themselves all the functions and powers of nautical discovery."-On the Geographical System of Herodotus.

ff See Smith's History of Cork, book, i. chap. i. According to Appian, the Spaniards for his time used to perform the passage to Britain, with the tide in their favour, in half a day.—“Quando in Britanniam, unà cum æstu maris transvehuntur quæ quidem trajectio dimidiati diei est."-Iberica.

glimpses of the British isles, in their silent course through past ages, are obtained; nor was it till a comparatively late period that the Greeks themselves became acquainted with their existence. The jealousy with which the Phoenicians contrived to conceal from their Mediterranean neighbours these remote sources of their wealth, had prevented, even in the time of Homer, more than a doubtful and glimmering notion of a Sea of Isles beyond the Pillars from reaching the yet unexcursive Greeks. Enough, however, had transpired to awaken the dreams alike of the poet and the adventurer; and while Homer, embellishing the vague tales which he had caught up from Phoenician voyages,* placed in those isles the abodes of the Pious and the Elysian fields of the Blest, the thoughts of the trader and speculator were not less actively occupied in discovering treasures without end in the same poetic regions. Hence all those popular traditions of the Fortunate Islands, the Hesperides, the Isle of Calypso,-creations called up in these "unpathed waters," and adopted into the poetry of the Greeks, before any clear knowledge of the realities had reached them. In the "Argonautics," a poem written, it is supposed, more than 500 years before the Christian era, there is a sort of vague dream of the Atlantic, in which Ireland alone, under the Celtic name of Iernis, is glanced at, without any reference whatever to Britain. It is thought, moreover, to have been by special information, direct from the Phoenicians that the poet acquired this knowledge; as it appears from Herodotus, that not even the names of the Cassiterides, or British Isles, were known in Greece when he wrote; and the single fact, that they were the islands from which tin was imported, comprised all that the historian himself had it in his power to tell of them.

The very first mention that occurs of the two chief British Isles is in a work¶ written, if not by Aristotle, by an author contemporary with that philosopher,-the treatise in question having been dedicated to Alexander the Great. The length of time, indeed, during which the monopoly of the trade in tin by the Phoenicians was kept not only inviolate, but secret, forms one of the most striking marvels of ancient history. For although, as far back as about 400 years before Herodotus wrote, there had reached Homer, as we have seen, some faint glimpses of an ocean to the west, which his imagination had peopled with creations of its own, it was not till the time of Aristotle**- -ncar a whole century after-that the Massilian Greeks had learned to explore those western regions themselves, and that, for the first time, in any writings that have come down to us, we find the two chief British islands mentioned, in the authentic treatise just referred to, under their old Celtic names of Albion and Ierne.

It is from a source, however, comparatively modern-the geographical poem of Festus Avienus-that our most valuable insight into the fortunes of ancient Ireland is derived, In the separate expeditions undertaken by Hanno and Himilco beyond the Straits, while the former sailed in a southern direction, the latter, shaping his course to the north, along the shores of Spain, (the old track of Phoenician voyagers between Gades and Gallicia,) stretched from thence across the ocean to the Estrumnides, or Tin Isles. Of this expedition, a record, or journal, such as Hanno has left of his Periplus, was deposited by

"That Home. had the opportunities mentioned, and that he did not neglect to improve them, will best appear by considering what he has really learned from the Phoenicians. This will be a certain proof of his having conversed with them."-Blackwell, Inquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, sect. 11.

† Ο τοίνυν ποιητης τας τοσαυτας στρατίας έτι τα εσχατα της 16ηριας ιστορηκως, πυνθανόμενος δε και πλούτον και τας άλλας αρετας (οι γαρ Φοίνικες εδήλουν τουτο) ενταυθα τον των ευαεβων έπλασε χωρον και TO HAUGIOV Tedior.-Strabon. lib. iii.

Plutarch. de Facie in Orb. Lun.-Hesiod. Theogon.

Written, it is supposed,' by Onomacritus, a cotemporary of Pisistratus. There appears to be no good reason for doubting the high antiquity of this poem. The treatise, in defence of its authenticity, by Ruhn. kenius, who shows it to have been quoted by two ancient grammarians, seems to have set the question at rest. (Epist. Crit. 2) Archbishop Usher, in referring to the mention of lerne in this poem adds, that "the Romans themselves could not produce such a tribute to their antiquity:" (Ecclesiar. Antiq. c. 16:) and Camden, to secure a share of the high honour for his country, first supposes that a nameless island, described by the poet, must be Britain; and then changes the sole epithet by which it is described, for one more suited to his purpose:-" Quæ necessariò sit hæc nostra, Aerxxıcv xepocv, id est, albicantem terram dixisse quam ante pauculos versus Nnσov euxneoσav, pro λeuxлσay, vocasse videatur."-Camden, Britan.

"Nempe edoctus à Phoenicibus, Græcis enim tunc temporis hæc loca erant inaccessa."-Bochart, Geog. Sac. lib. i. c. 39. The epithet, Cronian, applied by this Orphic poet to this sea in the neighbourhood of the Hyperboreans, is, according to Toland, purely Irish; the word Croin, in that language, signifying

Frozen.

This circumstance of Ireland having been known to the Argonauts, is thus alluded to by a Dutch writer of the sixteenth century, Adrian Junius:

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¶ De Mundo.

**The Athenians had already, in this philosopher's time, as he himself mentions (Economic. 1, 2.) been advised to secure to themselves the monopoly of the Tyrian market, by buying up all the lead.

Himilco in one of the temples of Carthage, and still existed in the fourth century, when Avienus, having access, as he mentions, to the Punic records, collected from thence those curious details which he has preserved in his Iambics,* and which furnish by far the most interesting glimpse derived from antiquity of the early condition of Ireland. The Estrumnides, or Scilly Islands, are described, in this sketch, as two days' sail from the larger Sacred Island, inhabited by the Hiberni; and in the neighbourhood of the latter, the island of the Albiones, it is said, extends. Though the description be somewhat obscure, yet the Celtic names of the two great Islands, and their relative position, as well to the Estrumnides as to each other, leave no doubt as to Britain and Ireland being the two places designated. The commerce carried on by the people of Gades with the Tin Isles is expressly mentioned by the writer, who adds, that “ the husbandmen, or planters, of Carthage, as well as her common people, went to those isles,"-thus implying that she had established there a permanent colony.

In this short but circumstantial sketch, the features of Ireland are brought into view far more prominently than those of Britain. After a description of the hide-covered boats, or currachs, in which the inhabitants of those islands navigated their seas, the populousness of the isle of the Hiberni, and the turfy nature of its soil, are commemorated. But the remarkable fact contained in this record-itself of such antiquity-is, that Ireland was then, and had been from ancient times, designated "The Sacred Island." This reference of the date of her early renown, to times so remote as to be in Himilco's days ancient, carries the imagination, it must be owned, far back into the depths of the past, yet hardly farther than the steps of history will be found to accompany its flight. Respecting the period of the expeditions of Hanno and Himilco, the opinions of the learned have differed; and by some their date is referred to so distant a period as 1000 years before the Christian era.t Combining the statement, however, of Pliny, that they took place during the most flourishing epoch of Carthage, with the internal evidence furnished by Hanno's own Periplus, there is no doubt that it was, at least, before the reign of Alexander the Great that these two memorable expeditions occurred. Those ancients," therefore, from whom the fame of the Sacred Island had been handed down, could have been no other than the Phoenicians of Gades, and the Gallician coasts of Spain, who through so many centuries, had reigned alone in those secluded seas, and were the dispensers of religion, as well as of commerce, wherever they bent their course.||

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At how early a period this remarkable people began to spread themselves over the globe, the inscription legible, for many an age, on the two Pillars, near the Fount of the Magi, at Tanglers,-"We fly from the face of Joshua, the robber,"-bore striking testimony. Nothing, indeed, can mark more vividly the remote date of even the maturity

*Hec nos ab imis Punicorum annalibus
Prolata longo tempore edidimus tibi.”

Fest. Avienus, de Oris Maritim.

It would appear from this, that the records to which Avienus had access, were written in Punic,-a circumstance which, if true, says Dodwell, would afford a probable reason for the name of Himilco having been so long unknown to the Greeks:-" Ea causa satis verisimilis esse potuit cur tamdiù Græcos lateurit Himilco, etiam eos qui collegæ meminerint Hannonis."-Dissert. de Peripli Hannonis ætate.

"Ast hinc duobus in Sacram, sic Insulam
Dixere prisci, solibus cursus rati est.
Hæc inter undas multum cespitem jacit,
Eamque latè gens Hibernorum colit.
Propinqua rursus insula Albionum patet.
Tartesiisque in terminos Estrumnidum
Negociandi mos erat, Carthaginis

Etiam colonis, et vulgus inter Herculis
Agitans columnas hæc adibant æquora."

One of the reasons assigned by Dodwell for rejecting the Periplus of Hanno, as a work fabricated, after his death, by some Sicilian Greek, is the occurrence of Greek names instead of Phoenician for the different places mentioned in it. This objection, however, does not apply to the account of Himilco, as reported by Avienus, in which the old names Gadir, Albion, and Hibernia declare sufficiently their Phoenician and Celtic original.

Speaking of the Argonautics and the record of Himilco, Bishop Stillingfleet says, "These are undoubted testimonies of the ancient peopling of Ireland, and of far greater authority than those domestic annals now so much extolled.-Antiquities of the British Churches, c. 5.

Nous croyons donc, que cette expédition, a du précéder Hésiode de trente ou quarante ans, et qu'on peut la fixer vers mille ans avant l'ère Chrétienne.-Gosselin, Recherches sur la Geographie des Anciens. § Et Hanno, Carthaginis potentia florente, circumvectus a Gadibus ad finem Arabiæ, navigationem eam prodidit scripto: sicut ad extera Europa noscenda missus eodem tempore Himilco.-Plin. Nat. Hist.

lib. ii. c. 67.

See, for a learned and luminous view of the relations of ancient Ireland with the East, Lord Rosse's Vindication of the Will of the Rt. Hon. Henry Flood.

Procop. Vandal. lib. 2. c. 10.-Even this is by Bishop Cumberland considered too stinted a range of time for their colonizations. " They seem to me," he says, " to have had much more time to make their plantations than that learned man (Bochart) thought of; for, as I understand their history, they had time from about Abraham's death, which was about 370 years before Joshua Invaded Canaan, from which Bochart begins."-Notes on the Synchronism of Canaan and Egypt.

of their empire, than the impressive fact, that the famed temple which they raised, at Gades, to their Hercules, was, in the time of the Romans, one of the most memorable remains of ancient days.* Not to go back, however, as far as the period, little less than 1500 years before our era, when their colonies first began to swarm over the waters, we need but take their most prosperous epoch, which commenced with the reign of Solomon, and supposing their sails to have then first reached the Atlantic, the date of the probable colonization of that region must still be fixed high in time. In the days of Herodotus, by whom first vaguely, and without any certain knowledge of a sea beyond the Straits, the importation of tin from the Cassiterides is mentioned, it is hardly too much to assume that the Phoenicians had, for some time, formed a settlement in these islands. That they must have had a factory here is pretty generally conceded :† but a people, whose system it was to make colonization the basis of their power, were assuredly not likely to have left a position of such immense commercial importance unoccupied; and the policy, first taught by them to trading nations, of extending the circle of their customers by means of colonies, was shown in the barter, which they thenceforward maintained with the British Isles-exchanging their own earthen vessels, salt, and brass, for the tin, lead, and skins produced in these islands.‡

There are grounds for believing, also, that to the Phoenicians, and consequently to the Greeks, Ireland was known, if not earlier, at least more intimately, than Britain. We have seen that, in the ancient Poem called the "Argonautics," supposed to have been written in the time of the Pisistratidæ, and by a poet instructed, it is thought, from Phonician sources, Ierne alone is mentioned, without any allusion whatever to Britain; and in the record preserved by Himilco's voyage to these seas, while the characteristic features of the Sacred Isle are dwelt upon with some minuteness, a single line alone is allotted to the mere geographical statement that in her neighbourhood the Island of the Albiones extends.

Another proof of the earlier intimacy which the Phoenician Spaniards maintained with Ireland, is to be found in the Geography of Ptolemy, who wrote at the beginning of the second century, and derived chiefly, it is known, from Phoenician authorities, his information respecting these islands. For while, in describing the places of Britain, more especially of its northern portion, this geographer has fallen into the grossest errors,placing the Mull of Galloway to the north, and Cape Orcas or Dunsby Head to the east,-in his account of Ireland, on the contrary, situated as she then was beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, and hardly known within that circle to exist, he has shown considerable accuracy, not only with respect to the shores and promontories of the island, but in most of his details of the interior of the country, its various cities and tribes, lakes, rivers, and boundaries. It is worthy of remark, too, that while of the towns and places of Britain he has in general given but the new Roman names, those of Ireland still bear on his map their old Celtic titles;¶ the city Hybernis still tells a tale of far distant times, and the Sacred Promontory, now known by the name of Carnsore Point, transports our imagination back to the old Phoenician days.** When it is considered that Ptolemy, or rather Marinus of Tyre, the writer, whose steps he implicitly followed, is believed to

* Diodor. Sicul. lib. iv.

"During this commerce, it can scarce be doubted that there might be established, on the different coasts, factories for the greater convenience of trading with the natives for skins, furs tin, and such other commodities as the respective countries then produced."-Beauford, Druidism Revived, Collect. Hib. No. VII. † Μεταλλα δε εχοντες καττίτερου και κολυβδου, κεραηιν αντί τούτων και των δερματων διαλλάττονται, και άλας, και χαλκώματα προς τους εμπόρους.—Strab. Geograph. lib. iii.

§ It may appear inconsistent with the claim of Ireland to priority of reputation, that the whole of the Cassiterides were, in those days, called the Britannic Isles,-a circumstance which, taken as implying that the others had derived their title from Britain, and had so far merged their reputation in hers, would doubtless indicate so far a pre-eminence on her part. The name Britannia, however, which, in Celtic, means a land of metals, was applied generically to the whole cluster of the Tin Isles,-the Isle of Man and those of Scilly included, and being, therefore, a title common to all, could not imply, in itself, any superiority of one over another. Whether tin has been ever found in Ireland is doubtful; but lead mines, which were, at least, equally a source of lucre to the Phoenicians, have been, not long since, discovered and worked.

By an error in the geographical or astronomical observations preserved by Ptolemy, the latitudes north of this point (the Novantum Chersonesus, or Rens of Galloway,) appear to have been mistaken for the longitudes, and consequently this part of Britain is thrown to the east."-Notes on Richard of Cirencester.

"Ireland plainly preserves, in her topography, a much greater proportion of Celtic names than the map of any other country."-Chalmer's Caledonia, vol. i. book i. chap. i.

***In the remote ages of Phoenician commerce, all the western and south-western promontories of Europe were consecrated by the erection of pillars or temples, and by religious names of Celtic and primeval antiquity: this is expressly stated by Strabo. These sacred headlands multiplied in proportion as new discoveries were made along the coasts."-Letters of Columbanus, by O'Connor, Letter Third. The learned writer adds in a note:-"The Sacrum Promontorium, or south western headland of Iberia Antiqua, was Cape St. Vincent. That of Ireland was Carne-soir point, as stated by Ptolemy." This headland of Carnsore would be the first to meet the eyes of the Phoenician navigators in their way from Cornwall to Ireland.

have founded his geographical descriptions and maps on an ancient Tyrian Atlas,* this want of aboriginal names for the cities and places of Britain, and their predominance in the map of Ireland, prove how much more anciently and intimately the latter island must have been known to the geographers of Tyre than the former.

But even this proof of her earlier intercourse with that people and their colonies, and her proportionate advance in the career of civilization, is hardly more strong than the remarkable testimony, to the same effect, of Tacitus, by whom it is declared that, at the time when he wrote, "the waters and harbours of Ireland were better known, through the resort of commerce and navigators, than those of Britain."+ From this it appears that, though scarce heard of, till within a short period, by the Romans, and almost as strange to the Greeks, this sequestered island was yet in possession of channels of intercourse distinct from either; and that while the Britons, shut out from the Continent by their Roman masters, saw themselves deprived of all that profitable intercourse which they had long maintained with the Veneti, and other people of Gaul, Ireland still continued to cultivate her old relations with Spain, and saw her barks venturing on their accustomed course, between the Celtic Cape and the Sacred Promontory, as they had done for centuries before.

Combining these proofs of an early intercourse between Ireland and the Phoenician Spaniards, with the title of Sacred bestowed on this island in far distant times, it can hardly be doubted, that her pre-eminence in religion was the chief source of this distinction; and that she was, in all probability, the chosen depository of the Phoenician worship in these seas. By the epithet Sacred, applied to a people among the ancients, it was always understood that there belonged to them some religious or sacerdotal character. In this sense it was, that the Argippæi, mentioned by Herodotus, were called a Holy People; and the claim of Ireland to such a designation was doubtless of the same venerable kind. It has been conjectured, not without strong grounds of probability, that it was a part of the policy of the Phoenician priesthood to send out missions to their distant colonies, on much the same plan as that of the Jesuits at Paraguay, for the purpose of extending their spiritual power over those regions of which their merchants had possessed themselves; and it is by no means unlikely that the title of Sacred, bestowed thus early upon Ireland, may have arisen from her having been chosen as the chief seat of such a mission.

The fact, that there existed an island devoted to religious rites in these regions, has been intimated by almost all the Greek writers who have treated of them; and the posi tion, in every instance, assigned to it, answers perfectly to that of Ireland. By Plutarch|| it is stated, that an envoy despatched by the Emperor Claudius to explore the British Isles, found on an island, in the neighbourhood of Britain, an order of Magi accounted holy by the people: and, in another work of the same writer, ¶ some fabulous wonders are related of an island lying to the west of Britain, the inhabitants of which were a holy race; while, at the same time, a connexion between them and Carthage is indistinctly intimated. Diodorus Siculus also gives an account, on the authority of some ancient writers, of an island** situated, as he says, "over against Gaul;" and which, from its

"It has been shown by Bremer (De Fontibus Geographorum Ptolemæi, &c.,) a writer quoted by Heeren, "that Ptolemy's work itself, as well as the accompanying charts, usually attributed to a certain Agathodæmon, who lived at Alexandria in the fifth century, were, in reality, derived from Phoenician or Tyrian sources;-in other words, that Ptolemy, or, more properly speaking, Marinus of Tyre, who lived but a short time before him, and whose work he only corrected, must have founded his geographical descriptions and maps on an ancient Tyrian Atlas."-See Heeren's Historical Researches, vol. iii. Append. C.

Melius aditus portusque, per commercia et negociatores, cogniti."-Tacit. Agricol. c. 24. An attempt has been made, by some of the commentators, to deprive Ireland of most of the advantages of this testimony, by the suggestion of a new and barbarous reading, which transfers the word "melius" to the preceding sentence, and is not less unjust to the elegant Latinity of the historian, than to the ancient claims of the country of which he treats. It is, however, gratifying to observe that, in spite of this effort, the old reading in general maintains its ground; though, with a feeling but too characteristic of a certain class of Irishmen, Arthur Murphy has, in his translation, adopted the new one.

1 Lib. ii.

"I believe it will be found that many of their regular priests, the Magi, or Gours, did (as the regulars of modern times and religions have done) settle missions amongst the nations in those most distant parts."Wise's Inquiries concerning the First Inhabitants, Language, &c. of Europe. Sir Isaac Newton, too, as quoted by Pownall, says, "With these Phoenicians came a sort of men skilled in religious mysteries."

In Numâ.

¶ De Fac. in Orb. Lunæ. "Marcellus, who wrote a history of Ethiopian affairs, says, that such and so great an island (the Atalantis) once existed, is evinced by those who composed histories of things relative to the external sea. For they relate that, in those times, there were seven islands in the Atlantic Sea sacred to Proserpine."-Proclus on the Timaus. quoted in Clarke's Maritime Discoveries.

See, for the traditions in India respecting the White Island of the West, Asiastic Transactions, vol. ii. "Hiran'ya and Su-varn'eya (says Major Wilford) are obviously the same with Erin and Juvernia, or Ireland. Another name for it is Surya Dwipa, or the Island of the Suu, and it is probably the old Garden of Phoebus of the western mythologists."-Essay on the Sacred Isles in the West.

**This island has been claimed on the part of several countries. The editor of Diodorus, in a short note on his Index, suggests that it may have been meant for Britain:-"Vide num de Anglia intelligi queat."

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