This was a true intellectual rise. It was the Intellect at work building the universe of which it is the key; finding anew that Nature also is working in every detail after the laws of the human mind.

"It is not, then, cities, or mountains, or animals, or globes that any longer command us, but only man; not the fact, but so much of man as is in the fact."

So in this research, I have felt that it is not so much the trials and the discoveries made in this great and new field of Nature which attract us, instructive and useful, even momentous as they are-for after all to many they are but abstractions-not these, so much as the breathing human beings, who in the far past saw them and deciphered them in the light of those other days, and of whose life they formed a part; who thought of them, and whose thoughts lived on, and became immortal, and moved downward through generation after generation to us; even as our thoughts, joining theirs, will pass through the ages to the generations yet to come.

'Emerson: Natural History of Intellect.

CHAPTER I.

THE use of amber begins with the dawn of civilization. The discovery of beads in the royal tombs at Mycenae and at various places throughout Sardinia and the territory of ancient Etruria, proves that trade in it existed in prehistoric times; while the identity in chemical constitution of the amber ornaments of Mycenae and the Baltic amber from the Tertiary formation of the Prussian Samland, the coasts of southern Sweden and the northern Russian provinces, indicates the far distant source from which the resin was anciently derived.' Who first brought the resin from the Baltic Sea to the Levant is an undetermined question, since it is known to have come southward across Europe by land as well as around the continent by water.

The Phoenicians-those far-sighted and consummately keen traders, whose commercial and maritime supremacy is still unrivaled by that of any modern nation-extended their voyages past the gates of the world into the unknown ocean in search of both the amber of the Northern Sea and the tin of Cornwall; for to obtain the latter the makers of bronze from all quarters flocked to the great metal market of Sidon. Both commodities also came by way of the Rhine and the Rhone to Marseilles and across the Alps to Etruria and chiefly to the valley of the Po, besides elsewhere by other land routes, along all of which stores of tin and amber have been found as they were ages ago hidden when the caravans were attacked or fell victims to the natural perils of the road. While these ways are known to have existed, and the amber trade over them to have been maintained before Rome or Carthage were

1Schliemann: Mycenae and Tiryns, 1876, 203, 245; Tiryns, 1886, 369. Simcox: Prehistoric Civilizations, 1894.

founded, it may be that the Phoenician voyages to the Baltic were of still greater antiquity, for the beads of Mycenae date from at least two thousand years before our

era.

The amber was used by the ancient world as a jewel and for decoration. Its color and lustre reminded the fanciful Greeks of the virgin gold which glistened in the sands of Pactolus, even as the brilliant metal had itself recalled to them the yellow sunshine. Afterwards they applied the same name to the compounds of metals which, when burnished, gave a golden glow. They were all children of the sun "Elector"-reflecting in miniature his radiance. Thus, in common with native gold and the silver-gold alloys, the amber, in Hellenic speech, came to be called "electron.""

3

2

Throughout Greek literature, even from the time of Homer and Hesiod, the mention of it is frequent. It is inlaid in the royal roof of Menelaus, it bejewels the bracelets of Penelope, the necklaces of Eumoeus, and the shield of Hercules. Legends cluster thick about it. Through the lost tragedy of Æschylus, the Hippolyta of Euripides and the Metamorphoses of Ovid comes the myth of Phaeton, recounting his death by the thunderbolt and fall into the river Eridanus, and the transformation of the weeping Heliades into poplars ever sighing and shedding their amber tears beside the stream. The Greek traders coming to the mouth of the Po for their cargoes, easily believed the story-perhaps told to conceal the true source-that the resin had been gathered under the poplar trees along the banks, or on the Electrides-the islands at the outlet of the river. Long afterwards, so firmly did the

'The ancient Greek poets called the sun éxrop and Homer repeatedly so terms it (Iliad. Z.' 513: T.' 398). “Electron" is used very indefinitely by the Greek classic writers-and in fact has no permanent gender, though commonly neuter. See Rossignol: Les Métaux Dans l'Antiquité, 345. Paris, 1863.

2 Odyssey.

3 Hesiod: Scutum Herculis.

TRADITIONS OF THE AMBER.

17

legend persist, men came to search the shores of Eridanus for amber, as the Spanish adventurers sought the Eldorado in the new world.

"Dost thou think that we would tug against this torrent for two oboli a day?" laughed the boatmen of the Po to the discomfited Lucian, "could we find riches under the poplar trees for the picking up?"

To the mythical tales set afloat by the traders, became added the fancies of the poets. Amber is gathered, so ran one fable, by the maiden guardians of the golden Hesperides as it falls from the poplars into Lake Electrum; it is the slime of drear Lake Cephisis, the sweat of the laboring soil under the fierce rays of the sun, the tears of the Indian birds for the death of Meleager, said others. And the sailors told of other Electrides islands in the German ocean and off the Calabrian coast where grew the tree "Electrida," and of stones in far-off Britain "purging thick amber."

It often happens that historical facts become embedded, as it were, in the names of things, and thus preserved, and the knowledge of them so passed down through centuries. Just as we find now locked in the yellow depths of the amber, bodies of insects which lived ages ago, so in one of the designations which the people of ancient times gave to it is embalmed, perhaps, the story of how electricity first became known to the civilized world.

The Syrian women, Pliny says,' called the amber "harpaga" or "the clutcher;" which is obviously based on a peculiarity of it altogether different from that which caused it to be likened to an embodied sunbeam. This name, in turn, came from its use in spinning, the oldest handiwork known to the race, and in the mode of spinning which has been employed since the very beginning of civilization. So that we may conjecture that the name came down from the old Phoenicians, and that the amber which they

1

1 Pliny : lib. xxxvii. c. 1 ; Aldrovandus: Musaeum Metallicum. Milan, 1648, 404.

worked into beads and ornaments found its place in the hands of every woman who spun with the distaff, and who could afford the luxury of a spindle made of the muchprized substance. The way in which the spinning was done by distaff and spindle, Catullus tells :

"The loaded distaff in the left hand placed,

With spongy coils of snow-white wool was graced,
From these the right hand lengthening fibres drew,
Which into thread 'neath nimble fingers grew.
At intervals a gentle touch was given,

By which the twirling whorl was onward driven..
Then, when the sinking spindle reached the ground,
The recent thread around its spire was wound,

Until the clasp within its nipping cleft

Held fast the newly finished length of weft."

As the spindle descended, and at the same time whirled around, it rubbed against the loose feminine garments; thus it became electrified, as amber always does when rubbed, so that on nearing the ground, it drew to itself the dust or bits of leaves or chaff lying there, or sometimes attracted the light fringe of clothing. The spinner easily saw this, because the chaff would leap up to the excited resin, or the fringe filaments extend themselves toward it, and moreover, unless she were careful, the dust and other substances so attracted would become entangled in her thread. Therefore, she called her amber spindle, the "clutcher;" for it seemed to seize these light bodies as if it had invisible talons which not only grasped, but held. This was probably the first intelligent observation of an electrical effect. It is singular that it should have become apparent through the earliest practical, in contradistinction to merely ornamental, use of the amber, though perhaps nothing strange that it is due to the keener perception of woman.