Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/60

 not to strain to the uttermost a description obviously poetical. The "ivory" here noticed is most likely box-wood, the abundant produce of Corsica, Italy, and Spain, of the "Isles of Chittim," or Western Europe.

"The inhabitants of Zidon and Arvad" (Aradus, now Ruad,) "were thy mariners;" but Tyre kept the command of her ships in her own hands, for "thy wise men, O Tyrus, that were in thee, were thy pilots." "The ancients of Gebal," Ezekiel continues, "and the wise men thereof were in thee thy calkers. All the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy their merchandise;" that is, besides their own shipping, they largely employed those of surrounding and seafaring peoples, as those of Cyprus, and probably of Rhodes and Crete. "Fine linen with broidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail; blue and purple from the isles of Elishah was that which covered thee." The isles of Elishah are generally supposed to be the Greek Archipelago, and Pausanias states that the purple of the coast of Laconia, which was but little inferior to that of Tyre itself, was used for the decoration of awnings. "Javan" (the Ionian Greeks) "Tubal, and Meshech" (probably the people of the southern coasts of the Black Sea) "they were thy merchants; they traded the persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market;" a trade in slaves which has survived to the present day from the neighbouring district of Circassia; as, also, many of