ging back goods from other
countries to barter with their less daring neighbours. They reached
Greece itself and cruised along the northern coast of the Great Sea
to Italy, along the coast of Spain to the Rock of Gibraltar, and out
into the open Atlantic.

How their little sailing boats lived through the storms of that great
ocean none may know, for Phoenician records are lost, but we have every
reason to believe that they reached the northern coast of France and
brought back tin from the islands known to them as the Tin Islands.
In their home markets were found all manner of strange things from
foreign unknown lands, discovered by these master mariners--the
admiration of the ancient world.

[Illustration: A PHOENICIAN SHIP, ABOUT 700 B.C. From a bas-relief
at Nineveh.]

"The ships of Tarshish," said the old poet, "did sing of thee in thy
market, and thou wast replenished and made very glorious in the midst
of the seas; thy rowers have brought thee into great waters; the east
wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas."

All the world knew of the Phoenician seaports, Tyre and Sidon. They
were as famous as Memphis and Thebes on the Nile, as magnificent as
Nineveh on the Tigris and Babylon on the Euphrates. Men spoke of the
"renowned city of Tyre," whose merchants were as princes, whose
"traffickers" were among the honourable of the earth. "O thou that
art situate at the entry of the sea," cries the poet again, when the
greatness of Tyre was passing away, "which art a merchant of the people
from many isles.... Thy borders are in the midst of the seas; thy
builders have perfected thy beauty. They have made all thy ship-boards
of fir trees ... they have taken cedars of Lebanon to make masts for
thee. Of the oaks of Basan have they made thy oars.... Fine linen with
broidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be
thy sail.... The inhabitants of Sidon ... were thy mariners; thy wise
men were thy pilots."

As time goes on, early groups round the Euphrates and the Nile continue,
but new nations form and grow, new cities arise, new names appear.
Centuries of men live and die, ignorant of the great world that lies
about them--"Lords of the eastern world that knew no west."

England was yet unknown, America undreamt of, Australia still a
desolate island in an unknown sea. The burning eastern sun shone down
on to vast stretches of desert-land uninhabited by man, great rivers
flowed through dreary swam