We Shall Now Resume It, And Add Such Particulars On These Subjects As Relate To The Period That Intervened Between That Event And The Capture Of New Tyre By Alexander The Great.

These are few in number; for though New Tyre exceeded, according to all accounts, the old city in splendour, riches, and commercial prosperity, yet antient authors have not left us any precise accounts of their discoveries, such as can justly be fixed within the period to which we have alluded.

They seem to have advanced farther than they had previously done along the west coast of Africa, and further along the north coast of Spain: the discovery of the Cassiterides also, and their trade to these islands for tin, (which we have shewn could hardly have taken place so early as is generally supposed,) must also have occurred, either immediately before, or soon after, the building of New Tyre. It is generally believed, that the Cassiterides were the Scilly Islands, off the coast of Cornwall. Strabo and Ptolemy indeed place them off the coast of Spain; but Diodorus Siculus and Pliny give them a situation, which, considering the vague and erroneous ideas the antients possessed of the geography of this part of the world, corresponds pretty nearly with the southern part of Britain. According to Strabo, the Phoenicians first brought tin from the Cassiterides, which they sold to the Greeks, but kept (as was usual with them) the trade entirely to themselves, and were utterly silent respecting the place from which they brought it.

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