d received at their
hands either tributary princes or Roman garrisons. Budzak, Crim Tartary,
Circassia, and Mingrelia, are the modern appellations of those savage
countries.

Under the successors of Alexander, Syria was the seat of the Seleucidae,
who reigned over Upper Asia, till the successful revolt of the Parthians
confined their dominions between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean.
When Syria became subject to the Romans, it formed the eastern frontier
of their empire: nor did that province, in its utmost latitude, know any
other bounds than the mountains of Cappadocia to the north, and towards
the south, the confines of Egypt, and the Red Sea. Phoenicia and
Palestine were sometimes annexed to, and sometimes separated from, the
jurisdiction of Syria. The former of these was a narrow and rocky
coast; the latter was a territory scarcely superior to Wales, either in
fertility or extent. * Yet Phoenicia and Palestine will forever live in
the memory of mankind; since America, as well as Europe, has received
letters from the one, and religion from the other. A sandy desert, alike
destitute of wood and water, skirts along the doubtful confine of Syria,
from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. The wandering life of the Arabs was
inseparably connected with their independence; and wherever, on some
spots less barren than the rest, they ventured to for many settled
habitations, they soon became subjects to the Roman empire.

The geographers of antiquity have frequently hesitated to what portion
of the globe they should ascribe Egypt. By its situation that celebrated
kingdom is included within the immense peninsula of Africa; but it is
accessible only on the side of Asia, whose revolutions, in almost every
period of history, Egypt has humbly obeyed. A Roman praefect was seated
on the splendid throne of the Ptolemies; and the iron sceptre of the
Mamelukes is now in the hands of a Turkish pacha. The Nile flows down
the country, above five hundred miles from the tropic of Cancer to the
Mediterranean, and marks on either side of the extent of fertility by
the measure of its inundations. Cyrene, situate towards the west, and
along the sea-coast, was first a Greek colony, afterwards a province of
Egypt, and is now lost in the desert of Barca. *

From Cyrene to the ocean, the coast of Africa extends above fifteen
hundred miles; yet so closely is it pressed between the Mediterranean
and the Sahara, or sandy desert, that its breadth seldo