Amber, a Source of International Trade
The amber trade, which was probably first directed to the west Cimbrian coasts, and only subsequently to the Baltic and the country of the Esthonians, owes its first origin to the boldness and perseverance of Phœnician coast navigators. In its subsequent extension, it offers a remarkable instance of the influence which may be exerted by a predilection for even a single foreign production, in opening an inland trade between nations, and in making known large tracts of country. In the same way that the Phocæan Massilians brought the British tin across France to the Rhone, the amber was conveyed from people to people through Germany, and by the Celts on either declivity of the Alps to the Padus, and through Pannonia to the Borysthenes. It was this inland traffic which first brought the coasts of the Northern ocean into connexion with the Euxine and the Adriatic.—Humboldt’s Cosmos.