d reached its zenith.

[Sidenote: Previous habitat of coast-dwellers.]

Coast-dwelling peoples exhibit every degree of intimacy with the water,
from the amphibian life of many Malay tribes who love the wash of the
waves beneath their pile-built villages, to the Nama Bushmen who inhabit
the dune-walled coast of Southwest Africa, and know nothing of the sea.
In the resulting nautical development the natural talents and habits of
the people are of immense influence; but these in turn have been largely
determined by the geographical environment of their previous habitat,
whether inland or coastal, and by the duration in time, as well as the
degree and necessity, of their contact with the sea. The Phoenicians,
who, according to their traditions as variously interpreted, came to the
coast of Lebanon either from the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea,[460]
brought to their favorable maritime location a different endowment from
that of the land-trading Philistines, who moved up from the south to
occupy the sand-choked shores of Palestine,[461] or from that of the
Jews, bred to the grasslands of Mesopotamia and the gardens of Judea,
who only at rare periods in their history forced their way to the
sea.[462] The unindented coast stretching from Cape Carmel south to the
Nile delta never produced a maritime people and never achieved maritime
importance, till a race of experienced mariners like the Greeks planted
their colonies and built their harbor moles on the shores of Sharon and
Philistia.[463] So on the west face of Africa, from the Senegal southward
along the whole Guinea Coast to Benguela, all evidences of kinship and
tradition among the local tribes point to an origin on the interior
plains and a recent migration seaward,[464] so that no previous schooling
enabled them to exploit the numerous harbors along this littoral, as did
later the sea-bred Portuguese and English.

[Sidenote: Habitability of coasts as factor in maritime development.]

Not only the accessibility of the coast from the sea, but also its
habitability enters as a factor into its historical importance. A sandy
desert coast, like that of Southwest Africa and much of the Peruvian
littoral, or a sterile mountain face, like that of Lower California,
excludes the people of the country from the sea. Saldanha Bay, the one
good natural harbor on the west coast of Cape Colony, is worthless even
to the enterprising English, because it has no supply of fresh
water.[465] T