To trace the history of these fragments of a lost continent through former generations would be most interesting, but it must be here foregone. They have, however, bulked considerably in English history and figured frequently in her relations with her continental neighbors. They remained true to the royal cause after Charles I had been put to death, having been held by Sir John Grenville for Charles II. The garrison was reduced to submission by Ascue and Blake in 1651. Prince Charles was sheltered in Star Castle for a short while after his flight from Cornwall. The islands were notorious as the scenes of smuggling operations during the eighteenth century, but this was so vigorously dealt with that it proved as unprofitable as the various honest efforts to earn a livelihood that have been successively experimented with in this little world. It is said that Hamilco of Carthage, a colony of Phœnicia, discovered the islands in 3000 B.C.; at any rate, they have been identified with the Cassiterides or Hesperides of the Greeks, and the Sillinæ Insulæ of the Romans. The Phœnicians traded with them for tin, which was most probably brought from Cornwall, as there is no evidence that tin was ever found on the islands. An allusion in Diodorus Siculus throws light on this custom. He says: The tin “was first refined and then carried to an adjacent island for shipment to Gaul.” The Romans reduced the islands during their occupation of Great Britain and made them a place of banishment, a use to which they were put by Great Britain also during the seventeenth century. The Danish sea-kings found them a convenient rallying point for raids upon places in the Bristol Channel, but Athelstan drove the Danes out in 927. Subsequently an order of monks settled there, retaining an independent government till Henry I subordinated them to the Abbot of Tavistock. Scilly remained under the jurisdiction of the monks till the dissolution of the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII. The ruins of an old abbey are still visible on the island of Tresco. During the reign of Elizabeth, Sir Francis Godolphin built a number of forts and Star Castle near Hugh Town. The latter remains to the present, on the left of the harbor, at Star Fort.