Phoenician Discoveries.

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After-ages have become indebted to the Phoenicians. for many of the grandest principles of civilization. They were the first people who seem to have understood commerce as it is taught in our day-they were the parents of navigation-the inventors of the art of writing-the most successful professors of geography; and their manufactures attained so great a name, that in ancient times all articles of apparel, and things for domestic use, if superior in elegance or beauty, received the epithet of Sidonian. The Tyrians were also inventors of scarlet and purple colours, and by many it is asserted that the discovery of glass is due to the Phoenicians.

CHAPTER III.

Egypt and the Egyptians-Greece-Islands of the Mediterranean as connected with Greece.

IN the preceding chapter, when describing the rise of Phoenicia, we observed that the inhabitants of Egypt, to which country the Phoenicians owed their origin, felt but little sympathy with the pursuits of that great maritime people. It is true that the Egyptians had attained a degree of science which at one period raised them high in the scale of civilization; if we may believe the testimony of the ancient historian Eustathius, they had, under the direction of their great monarch Sesostris (who is supposed to have governed them some eighteen centuries before the Christian era) composed maps or representations of portions of the earth's surface, during a triumphal march through the great districts of the globe then known; yet, supposing these accounts to be partly true, it did not induce them to push their fortunes at sea, or render them desirous of acquiring dominion over the ever-changing element. We need not look deeply to discover the reasons for this indifference. They were placed on the margin of a river which, from its periodical inundations, required all their science, attention and time to study and guard against, but

Egyptians not Maritime.

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that caused such fecundity to the land, as to make it yield abundantly all the treasures of agriculture, whilst the stream formed a peculiar beauty which kept the people voluntary prisoners to its banks. The fertility of the country thus rendering them independent of other nations, they had few inducements to resort to the sea, and superstition lent its aid to convert indifference into positive aversion. The Egyptian priests taught their votaries to look on the ocean as the enemy of their god Osiris, and the emblem of Typhon their evil genius; mariners became regarded as impious wretches, intercourse with whom was fraught with peril; and for centuries subsequent to the period when the Mediterranean was covered with the vessels of various nations, the policy of their sovereigns still fostered in the Egyptians these peculiar opinions. Egypt, moreover, produced no timber adapted for the construction of ships; her coasts were low and unhealthy, and she possessed few harbours proper for the purposes of navigation; her only vessels in the early ages were those used upon the Nile, less for the necessities of commerce, than the objects of parade and ceremony; and in spite, therefore, of the grand figure she makes in the annals of early history-in spite of her being, perhaps, the foundress of inland trade by means of caravans-and in spite, too, of all the astronomical and geographical science she may have possessed, and have been the means of transmitting to after-agesEgypt has no title to the proud distinction of ever having been a ruler of the ocean.

The opinions held by the ancient dwellers on the banks of the Nile were not transmitted to their versatile offspring the Grecians, or if they were, the different situation in

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which the latter were placed caused such notions to be quickly discarded. Among the various peoples of the primitive ages, there was not one that could boast of such peculiar advantages of position as distinguished Greece. A temperate climate, a salubrious air, a fertile soil, were its distinguishing features; and it possessed besides, the attractions of beautiful bays, most extensive coasts and the vicinity of countless isles. It is not singular if, with such a situation, its inhabitants should have been early navigators; they had the Phoenicians before them as models; and they were ever quick to make the best of a position and seize on any circumstance likely to conduce to their aggrandisement.

When we seek, however, to trace the rise and progress of this ingenious people, we find so much of fable mixed up with the incidents of their career, as to be almost induced to reject the whole of their early exploits as pure inventions of their poets; most delightful and fascinating in themselves, but of no value as guides whereby to judge of the actual condition and powers of the nation. If we are to believe themselves, and the accounts of their primitive history, they sprang from the earth where mention of them is first made, and strengthened their standing and extended their influence through alliances with their gods and goddesses who dwelt on the top of one of their mountains, Olympus, and who were constantly mixed up with all their doings.

It appears that as early as 1263 years before Christ, the Greeks made a maritime expedition, which, from the numbers who joined in it, must have been considerable; it would also go far to prove that there existed among

Expedition of the Argonauts.

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them no mean amount of naval knowledge and experience, since those who embarked in it did so with perfect confidence of being able to attain a distant point, apparently well known to many of them, and through seas that offered no trifling amount of danger and difficult navigation. This undertaking was the famous expedition of the Argonauts, so called from the vessel of the adventurers being named the "Argo," which, from its unusual dimensions and destination, excited a great commotion in the country.

Unfortunately, however, for the probability of the story, the very object of the ancient heroes who embarked in the venture, is in itself a fable. It was to recover a golden fleece obtained from a ram, which, in addition to that costly appendage, was furnished with wings and endowed with the faculties of speech. This fleece had already been a subject of contention to mortals, for, in order to obtain possession of it, Ætes, king of Colchis (a country to the east of the Black Sea), had murdered his son-in-law, Phryxus. Jason, who was heir to the crown of Iolchos in Greece, had been deprived of the throne by his uncle Pelias, who promised to restore to him the dignity, if he would revenge the death of Phryxus, their mutual relation, and get back the golden fleece. Jason set out, accompanied by the flower of the Grecian youth, and their voyage on board the "Argo," through the Archipelago, and the Sea of Marmora, into the Euxine, with their adventures at Colchis and subsequent return, have formed the subject of innumerable tales and poems. Apart from the embellishments of tradition and the wonders which have gathered round it, the expedition of the Argonauts may be said to mark