Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/170

 the commodities of Egypt and foreign merchandise;" a testimony fully borne out by abundant statements in Holy Scripture. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel all speak in glowing terms of the great wealth of Arabia Felix. Nowhere, too, were the civilizing effects of commerce more noticeable than in Arabia Felix. Although Dr. Vincent remarks that "the importance of this commerce, as it appears in the "Periplus," is manifestly far inferior to the representation of it in Agatharchides," he adds, "still it is evident that the manners of the people in this quarter of Arabia were civilized, that the government was consistent, and that the merchant was protected. This character, as we learn from Niebuhr, Yemen still maintains, in preference to the Hijar and the whole interior of the peninsula. The same security is marked as strongly by the "Periplus" in Hadramaut; and the whole coast on the ocean being commercial, ''the interests of commerce have subdued the natural ferocity of the inhabitants''."

It would appear that, before the settlements at Moosa and Okelis, the ships from Persia, Caramania, and the Indus came no farther than the coast just outside the straits, near the modern Aden, and that here the fleets of Egypt met them and exchanged their articles of commerce. Many writers, too, on this subject, have maintained that the fleet of Solomon, though fitted out with the view of going as far as Sofala, did not proceed beyond the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and that they there exchanged the produce of the West for that of India, Yemen, and Africa. We, however, adhere to the opinion already expressed,