Europe. They had, therefore, numerous harbors on the Atlantic,
and some excellent ones on the Mediterranean. Many passed the
greater portion of their lives on the sea, supporting themselves
by fishing; yet they never thought of constructing and arming
large fleets; they never fought at sea in vessels of their own,
with the single exception of the naval battle between Julius
Caesar and the Veneti, off the coast of Armorica, where, in one
day, the Roman general destroyed the only maritime armament which
the Celts ever possessed.

And even this fact is not an exception to the general rule; for
M. de Penhouet, the greatest antiquarian, perhaps, in Celtic lore
in Brittany, has proved that the Veneti of Western Gaul were not
really Celts, but rather a colony of Carthaginians, the only one
probably remaining, in the time of Caesar, of those once numerous
foreign colonies of the old enemies of Rome.

Still this strange anomaly, an anomaly which is observable in no
other people living on an extensive coast, was not produced by
ignorance of the uses and importance of large fleets. From the
first they held constant intercourse with the great navigators of
antiquity. The Celtic harbors teemed with the craft of hardy seamen,
who came from Phoenicia, Carthage, and finally from Rome. Heeren,
in his researches on the Phoenicians, proves it for that very early
age, and mentions the strange fact that the name of Ireland with
them was the "Holy Isle." For several centuries, the Carthaginians,
in particular, used the harbors of Spain, of Gaul, even of Erin
and Britain, as their own. The Celtic inhabitants of those countries
allowed them to settle peaceably among them, to trade with them,
to use their cities as emporiums, to call them, in fact,