gs, chapter 10, verse 22, we find the following: "For the
king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram. Once in
three years came the navy of Tharshish bringing gold and silver, ivory
and apes and peacocks." This navy of Tharshish is beyond question the
navy of big ships manned by Jews and Phoenicians, and the expression
here used beyond question is used in the sense we should use in speaking
of a navy of big ships, or Baltimore Clippers.

In Second Chronicles, chapter 3, verse 6, we find the following: "And he
garnished the house with precious stones for beauty, and the gold was
gold of Parvaim."

We will not at the present time stop to ask where was Ophir, where was
Parvaim, where did the sailors of Tyre, so skilled in navigation and so
capable of navigating the western ocean, as we have seen them to be, as
to make successful voyages over to the Orkneys, a distance of some four
thousand miles from their homes, spend the three years during which they
were absent on their voyages from the easterly gulf of the Red Sea? No
Jewish lexicon tells us of almug or algum trees; no Hebrew writer
undertakes to describe them. But that enterprising publicist, O'Donovan,
who for the purposes of knowledge a few years ago traversed the
Caucasus, crossed the Caspian sea and buried himself for two or three
years among the still wild tribes of Turkestan, tells us that after his
liberation from the Turks, and while traveling in eastern Persia towards
the capital, he found a tree which attracted his attention because its
fibre reminded him of that of the Lignum Vitae, which tree the natives
called "The Yalgam." Here we have Solomon's algum tree with the name
scarcely modified. Would it be the strangest thing that ever happened if
these "yalgam," "almug," or "algum" trees, so beautiful as to be
unequalled by anything known in Palestine, and for that reason set up as
ornaments in God's house, should turn out in the day when all things
become known to be rosewood and mahogany from the west coast of Central
America, taken on board by Solomon's servants on their return from
Parvaim or Peru and the old mines of Potosi, where they had gone for the
gold which filled the coffers of Solomon. It may be said that such would
be a long voyage; true, but not much longer than a voyage to the
Orkneys. Authentic profane history tells us that between six and seven
hundred years before the birth of Christ, Pharaoh Necho, King of Egypt,
built a fl