Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

A Child's History of England by Charles Dickens
page 2 of 524 (00%)
lonely. The Islands lay solitary, in the great expanse of water.
The foaming waves dashed against their cliffs, and the bleak winds
blew over their forests; but the winds and waves brought no
adventurers to land upon the Islands, and the savage Islanders knew
nothing of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world knew
nothing of them.

It is supposed that the Phoenicians, who were an ancient people,
famous for carrying on trade, came in ships to these Islands, and
found that they produced tin and lead; both very useful things, as
you know, and both produced to this very hour upon the sea-coast.
The most celebrated tin mines in Cornwall are, still, close to the
sea. One of them, which I have seen, is so close to it that it is
hollowed out underneath the ocean; and the miners say, that in
stormy weather, when they are at work down in that deep place, they
can hear the noise of the waves thundering above their heads. So,
the Phoenicians, coasting about the Islands, would come, without
much difficulty, to where the tin and lead were.

The Phoenicians traded with the Islanders for these metals, and
gave the Islanders some other useful things in exchange. The
Islanders were, at first, poor savages, going almost naked, or only
dressed in the rough skins of beasts, and staining their bodies, as
other savages do, with coloured earths and the juices of plants.
But the Phoenicians, sailing over to the opposite coasts of France
and Belgium, and saying to the people there, 'We have been to those
white cliffs across the water, which you can see in fine weather,
and from that country, which is called BRITAIN, we bring this tin
and lead,' tempted some of the French and Belgians to come over
also. These people settled themselves on the south coast of
DigitalOcean Referral Badge