Much work yet remains to be done before the courses of these trade routes can be traced with precision and their dates fully established, but enough has been said, I trust, to show that in addition to direct sea routes from Brittany, the Irish gold fields tempted traders to cross both England and Scotland on their way from France and the Baltic.[123] These traders would have needed provisions for the journey, and for these would have bartered bronze axes to the people settled on the chalk downs and limestone hills. The journey across the Midland plain was through a densely wooded and probably uninhabited area, and in passing through Wales they kept mostly to the valleys, while the bulk of the population grazed its sheep on the high moorlands.[124] The few axes found must have been such as were lost by the way, and considering the number found this indicates an extensive traffic. In Ireland the traders probably employed the natives to wash the alluvial gold; they had also to barter with them for their supplies. No wonder, then, that bronze implements of the earliest type have been found almost more abundantly in that island than in any other part of Europe, while the number of gold objects found there is unsurpassed elsewhere. Doubtless the natives worked the gold fields sometimes on their own account, and they seem also to have tried to supply themselves with home-made metal axes. There are veins of copper ore in various parts of the island, which they seem to have discovered, but tin is to all intents and purposes absent.[125] It is possible, too, that the traders refused to divulge the secret of the tin alloy. It would have been strange indeed had they not done so, and so the native Irish, for a time at least, made themselves axes of copper. This, at least, seems so be the most plausible explanation of the great number of copper axes found in that island. The foregoing is, of necessity, but a brief account of the early metal trade and its relations with Celtic lands. To do the subject justice would require more space than is at my disposal; nor is the time yet ripe for more detailed treatment. This outline will serve to show that foreign elements reached Celtic lands some 4000 years ago, though in small numbers; who these people were must be considered in the next chapter. /Chapter IV/ THE PROSPECTORS