Page:The Periplus of Hanno.djvu/27



"The Phœnicians for some centuries confined their navigation within the limits of the Mediterranean, the Propontis, and the Euxine, land-locked seas, which are tideless and far less rough than the open ocean. But before the time of Solomon they had passed the Pillars of Hercules and affronted the dangers of the Atlantic. Their frail and small vessels, scarely bigger than modern fishing-smacks, proceeded southwards along the West African coast, as far as the tract watered by the Gambia and Senegal, while northwards they coasted along Spain, braved the heavy seas of the Bay of Biscay, and passing Cape Finisterre, ventured across the mouth of the English Channel to the Cassiterides. Singularly, from the West African shore, they boldly steered for the Fortunate Islands (the Canaries), visible from certain elevated points of the coast, though at 170 miles distance. Whether they proceeded further, in the south to the Azores, Madeira, and the Cape Verde Islands, in the north to the coast of Holland, and across the German Ocean to the Baltic, we regard as uncertain. It is possible that from time to time some of the more adventurous of their traders may have reached thus far; but their regular, settled and established navigation did not, we believe, extend beyond the Scilly Islands and coast of Cornwall to the northwest, and to the southwest Cape Non and the Canaries. The commerce of the Phœnicians was carried on to a large extent by land, though principally by sea. It appears from the famous chapter (xxvii) of Ezekiel which describes the richness and greatness of Tyre in the 6th century B. C, that almost the whole of Western Asia was penetrated by the Phœnician caravans, and laid under contribution to increase the wealth of the Phœnician trader. . . . Translating this glorious burst of poetry into prose, we find the following countries mentioned as carrying on an active trade with the Phœnician metropolis: Northern Syria, Syria of Damascus, Judah and the land of Israel, Egypt, Arabia, Babylonia, Assyria, Upper Mesopotamia, Armenia, Central Asia Minor, Ionia, Cyprus, Hellas or Greece, and Spain."—G. Rawlinson, History of Phœnicia, ch. 9.

"Though the invincible industry and enterprise of the Phœnicians maintained them as a people of importance down to the period of the Roman empire, yet the period of their widest range and greatest efficiency is to be sought much earlier—anterior to 700 B. C. In these remote times they and their colonists (the Carthaginians especially) were the exclusive navigators of the Mediterranean; the rise of the Greek maritime settlements banished their commerce to a great degree from the Ægean Sea, and embarrassed it even in the more westerly