n of savage groups,
engaged in wars instead of seeking commercial profits in distributing
the products of civilized life among the nations of mankind.

And Romulus and Remus had not yet emerged from the sheep folds upon the
Italian hills. But very early in the history of the world, and as
students of history believe, earlier than the call of Abraham, the
interests of mankind had called into existence along the eastern shore
of the Mediterranean Sea an active and intelligent population which had
engaged in commerce as a means of subsistence, and were carrying it on
with such success as was possible in the then condition of the world of
mankind. A civilization had sprung up at a very early period along the
banks of the united rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and from the
Persian gulf to Nineveh and Nimroud, where was produced a great variety
of articles of necessity and luxury unknown to the rest of the world.
We all understand the story told of Aehan, who secreted in the floor of
his tent a Babalonish garment about fourteen hundred years before the
Christian era, while Israel was battling against Ai[TN-2] See Joshua,
Chap. 8. The children of Japhet had passed up through Persia to the
Caucasus, and from the Caucasus around the Black Sea to the waters of
the Danube and the Grecian Islands. The luxuries produced in the valley
of the Euphrates and the Tigris, called Mesopotamia, furnished a ready
basis for a successful commerce across the desert by the way of Damascus
to the shores of the Mediterranean; and it was by this means that a
commerce sprang up along these shores such as the world had never seen,
and which rendered the people resident there the leaders in all the arts
of life, including the art of navigation, throughout the then known
world, a result but twice paralleled on earth, once in the middle ages
at Venice and once in our own age at our magical Chicago. This enabled
this people to become the leaders of their race down to about six
hundred years before Christ, when there came that terrible war wherein
Nebuchadnezzar, by besieging Tyre, caused "every head of that people to
become bald and every shoulder to become pealed."[TN-3] Tyre subsisted
after the siege of Nebuchadnezzar, but Tyre never attained again the
prosperity or influence which she possessed at the commencement of this
memorable siege. She had before this time planted two hundred and fifty
cities upon the north coast of Africa, including the ce