mention of the midnight sun shows, and then struck across to Scotland;
returning, apparently by the Irish Sea, to Bordeaux and so home
overland. This truly wonderful voyage he made at the public charge,
with a view to opening new trade routes, and it seems to have
thoroughly answered its purpose. Henceforward the Phoenician monopoly
was broken, and a constant stream of traffic in the precious tin
passed between Britain and Marseilles.[17]

D. 2.--The route was kept as secret as possible; Polybius tells
us that the Massiliots, when interrogated by one of the Scipios,
professed entire ignorance of Britain; but Pytheas (as quoted by his
contemporary Timaeus, as well as by later writers) states that the
metal was brought by coasters to a tidal island, _Ictis_, whence it
was shipped for Gaul. This island was six days' sail from the tin
diggings, and can scarcely be any but Thanet. St. Michael's Mount, now
the only tidal island on the south coast, was anciently part of the
mainland; a fact testified to by the forest remains still seen around
it. Nor could it be six days' sail from the tin mines. The Isle of
Wight, again, to which the name Ictis or Vectis would seem to point,
can never have been tidal at this date. But Thanet undoubtedly was
so in mediaeval times, and may well have been so for ages, while its
nearness to the Continent would recommend it to the Gallic merchants.
Indeed Pytheas himself probably selected it on this account for his
new emporium.

D. 3.--In his day, as we have seen, the tin reached this destination
by sea; but in the time of the later traveller Posidonius[18] it came
in wagons, probably by that track along the North Downs now known as
the "Pilgrims' Way." The chalk furnished a dry and open road, much
easier than the swamps and forests of the lower ground. Further