Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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“Surrounded by the silver streak,” our hardy forefathers often crossed to Ireland and France, prior to the first invasion of Britain by Julius Cæsar, B.C. 55, when he sailed from Boulogne with eighty vessels and 8,000 men, and with eighteen transports to carry 800 horses for the cavalry. In the second invasion he employed a fleet of 600 boats and twenty-five war-galleys, having with him five legions of infantry and 2,000 cavalry, a formidable army for the poor islanders to contend against. But their intercourse with the Romans speedily brought about commercial relations of importance. The pearl fisheries were then most profitable, while the “native” oyster was greatly esteemed by the Roman epicures, of whom Juvenal speaks in his fourth satire. He says they

“Could at one bite the oyster’s taste decide,

And say if at Circean rocks, or in

The Lucrine Lake, or on the coast of Richborough,

In Britain they were bred.”

British oysters were exported to Rome, as American oysters are now-a-days to England. Martial also mentions another trade in one of his epigrams, that of basket-making—