However this may be, there was no regular intercourse between Britain and Rome till some time after Caesar’s invasion; in the time of Tiberius, however, and probably earlier, the commerce of Britain was considerable.  Strabo, who died at the beginning of that emperor’s reign, informs us, that corn, cattle, gold, silver, tin, lead, hides, and dogs, were the commodities furnished by the Britons.  The tin and lead, he adds, came from the Cassiterides.  According to Camden, 800 vessels, laden with corn, were freighted annually to the continent; but this assertion rests on very doubtful authority, and cannot be credited if it applies to Britain, even very long after the Roman conquest.  Though Strabo expressly mentions gold and silver among the exports, yet Caesar takes notice of neither; and Cicero, in his epistles, writing to his friend, respecting Britain, states, on the authority of his brother, who was there, that there were neither of these metals in the island.  The dogs of Britain formed a very considerable and valuable article of export; they seem to have been known at Rome even before Caesar’s expedition:  the Romans employed them in hunting, and the Gauls in hunting and in their wars:  they were of different species.  Bears were also exported for the amphitheatres; but their exportation was not frequent till after the age of Augustus.  Bridle ornaments, chains, amber, and glass ware, are enumerated by Strabo among the exports from Britain; but, according to other authors, they were imported into it.  Baskets, toys made of bone, and oysters, were certainly among the exports; and, according to Solinus, gagates, or jet, of which Britain supplied a great deal of the best kind.  Chalk was also, according to Martial, an article of export:  there seems to have been British merchants whose sole employment was the exportation of this commodity, as appears by an ancient inscription found in Zealand, and quoted by Whitaker, in his history of Manchester.  This article was employed as a manure on the marshy land bordering on the Rhine.  Pliny remarks that its effect on the land continued eighty years.  The principal articles imported into Britain were copper and brass, and utensils made of these metals, earthen ware, salt, &c.  The traffic was carried on partly by means of barter, and partly by pieces of brass and iron, unshaped, unstamped, and rated by weight.  The duties paid in Gaul, on the imports and exports of Britain, formed, according to Strabo, the only tribute exacted from the latter country by the Romans in his time.

Of that part of Europe which lies to the north of Gaul, the Romans, at the period of which we are treating, knew little or nothing, though some indirect traffic was carried on with Germany.  The feathers of the German geese were preferred to all others at Rome; and amber formed a most important article of traffic.  This was found in great abundance on the Baltic shore of Germany:  at first, it seems to have been carried