Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/54

 *

navigation was that of a coasting trade, the mariners seldom quitting the land except when constrained to do so by some unavoidable necessity, such as the violence of a gale or the force of currents, or when a great saving of distance could be effected by crossing the mouths of deep bays where the headlands were at a moderate distance from each other. But a coasting navigation is really subject to greater difficulties and dangers than any other, and hence has in all times had the property of forming the most expert seamen. Thus it was that the seamen of Tyre found their way to Carthage, and ultimately through the pillars of Hercules to Gades and the tin-bearing islands of the West: and thus, too, the States of Tyre and of her great colony, Carthage, for centuries maintained their power and lofty position in the midst of nations in other respects greatly their superiors. By the prosecution, too, of coasting voyages the Portuguese, in later ages, passed the Cape of Good Hope, and reached the East Indies. Indeed nothing was more likely to advance discovery than voyages of such a character, for which the position of the three continents of the ancient world afforded considerable natural facilities, especially when taken in connection with the two long narrow seas known as the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Again, the Mediterranean, with its subordinate portions, comprising the Adriatic and the Levant, with the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, was peculiarly adapted for the commencement of an over-sea trade with a shipping still rude and with sailors little skilled; while its position in the centre, as it were, of these three continents, surrounded by the most