Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/171

 that at least a portion of Solomon's fleet visited both the Indus and the eastern coast of Africa. It is not, in itself, likely that seamen so enterprising and adventurous as the Phœnicians, would have failed in accomplishing any voyage wherein the ships of other nations had been successful; nor, viewing the profits the Arabians derived from their intercourse with the East, can it be supposed that the merchants and shipowners of Phœnicia would have cut short their voyages at the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, knowing too, as they could not fail to have known, many commercial reports about a vast country to the east abounding in riches, which the Arabians had reached by sea. It seems also more than probable that they had, at the same time, learnt something of the character of the winds which favoured such voyages, and their reasoning must have been, "What the inhabitants of the sea coasts of Arabia and Africa can perform by vessels in every way inferior to those of Phœnicia, we can accomplish so much the more successfully by means of our well appointed fleets."

The Arabians had also a considerable intercourse with the East from Kane, a port on the south-western shores of Arabia, in Hadramaut, a place enjoying a direct intercourse with Sana, and thence by the great caravan route with Saba. The merchants of Kane traded, on the one hand, with Baroach, Sindh, Ormus, and Persia, and on the other, with Egypt, whence they imported wine, corn, cloths suited for the Arabian market, salt, brass, tin, resin, specie, wrought plate, carved images, and horses, and exported various commodities common to the country,