164 THE VOYAGE OF PYTHEAS, [CHAP. VIII.
between the mouths of the Rhine'and the Elbe, and perhaps also
Schleswig, further to the north, with its fringe of islands. Thus
in one passage he remarks that opposite Britain,
dispersed over the German sea, were the Glaesiae
Diodorus. islands, which the later Greeks called the Electrides,
because amber (electrum) was produced there1. And again he
reports, that a day's sail from an estuary of the ocean, called
Mentonomon, on which the tribe of Guttones dwelt, was the
island of Abalus; and to it in the spring-time the waves carried
the amber, which was the scum of sea-water solidified: the
natives used it in place of fire-wood, and sold it to their
neighbours the Teuton!2. Elsewhere he mentions an island
called Baunonia, on the coast of the North Sea, "over against
Scythia," in which amber was found8; and Diodorus in the
same connexion speaks of an island named Basilia, "in that
part of Scythia which is beyond Gaul/1 from which amber was
brought to the mainland, and thence exported to the Mediter-
ranean*. As regards the islands called Glaesiae
it: should be remarked that the word glaesum—
which, according to Pliny and Tacitus, was the
native name for amber8—notwithstanding that the latter of these
two writers attributes its origin to the Aestii on the shores of the
Baltic, was probably learnt by the Romans from the inhabitants
of this North Sea coast, for it represents the Anglo-Saxon word
for amber, £ glaer,' and was given to that material because of its
brightness, being etymologically the same with the English verb
' to glare8.' At the present day, though the Baltic coasts furnish
a much larger supply of amber than the islands of the North Sea,
there is still a considerable export of that article from the west
coast of Schleswig.
1 Pliny, 4.103. 2 ibid. 37. 35. * ibid. 4. 94.
* Diodor. 5. 33. 1,5; cp. Pliny, 37. 36.
8 Pliny, 37. 43; certum est gigni in insulis septentrionalis oceani et ab
Germanis appellari glaesum. Tac. Germ. 45; sucinum, quod ipsi glaesum
vocant.
• Mullenhoff, of. tit., i. p. 482; Skeat, Etym* Dkt^ s. v. * glare,'