Famous otherwise, through all the centuries, for the AMBER they had been used to fish, and sell in foreign parts.
Amber, science declares, is a kind of petrified resin, distilled by pines that were dead before the days of Adam; which is now thrown up, in stormy weather, on that remote coast, and is there fished out by the amphibious people,--who can likewise get it by running mine-shafts into the sandhills on their coast;--by whom it is sold into the uttermost parts of the Earth, Arabia and beyond, from a very early period of time.

No doubt Pytheas had his eye upon this valuable product, when he ventured into survey of those regions,--which are still the great mother of amber in our world.

By their amber-fishery, with the aid of dairy-produce and plenty of beef and leather, these Heathen Preussen, of uncertain miscellaneous breed, contrived to support existence in a substantial manner; they figure to us as an inarticulate, heavy-footed, rather iracund people.

Their knowledge of Christianity was trifling, their aversion to knowing anything of it was great.
As Poland, and the neighbors to the south, were already Christian, and even the Bohemian Czechs were mostly Converted, pious wishes as to Preussen, we may fancy, were a constant feeling: but no effort hitherto, if efforts were made, had come to anything.

Let some daring missionary go to preach in that country, his reception is of the worst, or perhaps he is met on the frontier with menaces, and forbidden to preach at all; except sorrow and lost labor, nothing has yet proved attainable.