[85] _Orcas_ is a Celtic word signifying "young boar".
Another extract refers to hot springs in Britain, and a presiding deity identified with Minerva, in whose temple "the fires never go out, yet never whiten into ashes; when the fire has got dull it turns into round lumps like stones". Apparently coal was in use at a temple situated at Bath. Timæus, a contemporary of Pytheas, quoting from the lost diary of the explorer, states that tin was found on an island called Mictis, lying inwards (northward) at a distance of six days' sail from Britain. The natives made voyages to and from the island in their canoes of wickerwork covered with hides. Mictis could not have been Cornwall or an island in the English Channel. Strabo states that Crassus, who succeeded in reaching the Cassiterides, announced that the distance to them was greater than that from the Continent to Britain, and he found that the tin ore lay on the surface. Evidently tin was not mined on the island of Mictis as it was in Cornwall in later times.
An earlier explorer than Pytheas was Himilco, the Carthaginian. He reached Britain about 500 B.C. A Latin metrical rendering of his lost work was made by Rufus Festus Avienus in the fourth century of our era. Reference is made to the islands called the OEstrymnides that "raise their heads, lie scattered, and are rich in tin and lead". These islands were visited by Himilco, and were distant "two days voyage from the Sacred Island (Ireland) and near the broad Isle of the Albiones". As Rufus Festus Avienus refers to "the hardy folk of Britain", his Albiones may have been the people of Scotland. The name Albion was originally applied to England and Scotland. In the first century, however, Latin writers never used "Albion" except as a curiosity, and knew England as Britain. According to Himilco, the Tartessi of Spain were wont to trade with the natives of the northern tin islands. Even the Carthaginians "were accustomed to visit these seas". From other sources we learn that the Phoenicians carried tin from the Cassiterides direct to the Spanish port of Corbilo, the exact location of which is uncertain.
[Illustration: ENAMELLED BRONZE SHIELD (from the Thames near Battersea)