Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/305

 CARAVAN-TRADE OF THE PHEXICIASS. 28 1 J >ofbial in ancient times). The circumnavigation of Libya is said to have been one of the projects conceived by Alexander the Great, 1 and we may readily believe that if he had lived longer, it would have been confided to Nearchus, or some other officer of the like competence : nor can there be any reason why it should not have succeeded, especially since it would have been undertaken from the eastward, to the great profit of geograph- ical knowledge among the ancients, but with little advantage to their commerce. There is then adequate reason for admitting that these Phenicians rounded the cape of Good Hope from the East about GOO B. c., more than two thousand years earlier than Vasco de Gama did the same thing from the West : though the discovery was in the first instance of no avail, either for com- merce or for geographical science. Besides the maritime range of Tyre and Sidon, their trade by land in the interior of Asia was of great value and importance. They were the speculative merchants who directed the march of the caravans laden with Assyrian and Egyptian products across the deserts which separated them from inner Asia, 2 an opera- tion which presented hardly less difficulties, considering the Arabian depredators Avhom they were obliged to conciliate and even to employ as carriers, than the longest coast-voyage. They eeem to have stood alone in antiquity in their willingness to brave, and their ability to surmount, the perils of a distant land-traffic ; 3 and their descendants at Carthage and Utica were not less active in pushing caravans far into the interior of Africa. specting attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to circumnavigate Africa, as we may see by the tale of Eudoxus (Strabo, ii, 98; Cornel. Nep. ap. Plin H. N. ii, 67, who gives the story very differently ; and Pomp. Mela, iii, 9). 1 Arrian, Exp.Al. vii, 1, 2. a Herodot. i, 1. Qoiviicaf uTrayiveovra^ fyopTia 'Aaavpid TE nal A-lyvir- ria. 3 See the valuable chapter in Ilecrcn (Ueber den Verkehr der Alien "Welt i, 2, Abschn. 4, p. 96) about the land trade of the Phenicians. The twenty-seventh chapter of the prophet Ezckicl presents a striking picture of the general commerce of Tyre. VOL. in. 13 19oc.