Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/28

 S HISTORY or Aui IN I'IM.MCIA AND ii> DKI-KNOKNCIES. the sturdy arms of rowers when the bree/e was contrary or absent altogether ; at nightfall or at any sudden nu:nace from the sky, they could seek the nearest haven. And havens were plentiful. The mountain spurs which hindered land travelling were the salvation of the mariner. On one side or the: other of each jutting cape he found shelter from wind and wave. Here he would ride at anchor and wait for better weather, or if the worst came to the worst, he could beach his ship in some narrow creek and make all snug until the tempest should have spent its force. Many things must then have combined to lengthen a voyage ; but time was of no great value a few hours or a few days more or less made no great difference. The important thing was to be able to come and go ; to sally at will from home and to return at pleasure. In those days the mountains were clothed to their feet in forests which furnished splendid timber for ship-building, and that in inexhaustible quantities, so that it was easy to establish workshops on the shore in which the sound of the hammers should never cease. The carpenter who built and the mariner who sailed the ships furnished between them a bond of union for all the inhabitants of the coast, and prevented the isolation to which the peculiar formation of the country would otherwise have condemned each separate group. Even now it is mainly by the sea that the towns on the Syrian coast communicate with each other. The only difference is that the feluccas are now aided in the work by the steamboats that ply between the larger ports. In other ways the ancient customs have been preserved. No one wishing to go from Latakich to Tripoli, from Tripoli to Beyrout, or from Beyrout to Jaffa, would go by land, except, of course, tourists and archaeologists. In our days the profits of the traffic go chiefly to England and Austria, to Erance and Greece ; but it was not always so. For many centuries it was to Syrian ports that the vessels belonged by which the three basins into which the Mediterranean is divided were ploughed in every direction. The beginnings vere modest enough. In their quest of elbow room, the tribes crept up and down the coast, doubling, not without trepidation, the beetling promontories with their fringe of foam. Gradually they explored the whole coast, from Carmel to Casius ; they became familiar with the set of the currents, with every secure anchorage and every sheltering bay ; they learnt to read the signs of coming