Note 395 — Chapter VIII · FRANCE.

The existence of this line of dolmens and of a separate people, all the way from Brittany to Narbonne, may serve, perhaps, to explain the mode in which the tin of Britain found its way across France to the Mediterranean Sea. That the Veneti traded from the Côtes-du-Nord and the Morbihan to Cornwall and the Cassiterides, no one, probably, will dispute. Their vessels, according to Cæsar's account, were fully equal to carrying to France all the metal this country could produce. The road by which it reached Marseilles across France was always the difficulty. In later times, the Celtic trade-route across France was apparently up the Rhone, but on its left bank, and down the Seine, or on its right bank; passing then through Celtica, but round the Aquitania of Augustus, and reaching Britain through the country of the Morini, which was the route Cæsar followed. This does not, however, appear to have been the line which was taken by the trade in tin. It followed, so far as we know, the central line of the dolmen country; and the fact of one people and one language prevailing throughout the whole of that region takes away any improbability, and removes all the difficulties that have hitherto impeded the adoption of that hypothesis.