The close and dreary summer passes away. With the first days of September the autumnal rains begin to fall upon the hills, and washing away the ochreous earth lying upon the slopes, descend in muddy torrents into the hollows of the valleys. The Adonis river begins to swell with the ruddy waters, which, on reaching the sea, do not readily blend with it. The wind from the offing drives the river water back upon the coast, and forces it to cling for a long time to the shore, where it forms a kind of crimson fringe.* This was the blood of the hero, and the sight of this precious stream stirred up anew the devotion of the people, who donned once more their weeds of mourning until the priests were able to announce to them that, by virtue of their supplications, Adonis was brought back from the shades into new life. Shouts of joy immediately broke forth, and the people who had lately sympathized with the mourning goddess in her tears and cries of sorrow, now joined with her in expressions of mad and amorous delight. Wives and virgins—all the women who had refused during the week of mourning to make a sacrifice of their hair—were obliged to atone for this fault by putting themselves at the disposal of the strangers whom the festival had brought together, the reward of their service becoming the property of the sacred treasury.**

Berytus shared with Byblos the glory of having had El for its founder.* The road which connects these two cities makes a lengthy detour in its course along the coast, having to cross numberless ravines and rocky summits: before reaching Palai-Byblos, it passes over a headland by a series of steps cut into the rock, forming a kind of “ladder” similar to that which is encountered lower down, between Acre and the plains of Tyre.

The river Lykos runs like a kind of natural fosse along the base of this steep headland. It forms at the present time a torrent, fed by the melting snows of Mount Sannin, and is entirely unnavigable. It was better circumstanced formerly in this respect, and even in the early years of the Boman conquest, sailors from Arvad (Arados) were accustomed to sail up it as far as one of the passes of the lower Lebanon, leading into Cole-Syria. Berytus was installed at the base of a great headland which stands out boldly into the sea, and forms the most striking promontory to be met with in these regions from Carmel to the vicinity of Arvad. The port is nothing but an open creek with a petty roadstead, but it has the advantage of a good supply of fresh water, which pours down from the numerous springs to which it is indebted for its name.* According to ancient legends, it was given by El to one of his offspring called Poseidon by the Greeks.

Adonis desired to take possession of it, but was frustrated in the attempt, and the maritime Baal secured the permanence of his rule by marrying one of his sisters—the Baalat-Beyrut who is represented as a nymph on Græco-Roman coins.* The rule of the city extended as far as the banks of the Tamur, and an old legend narrates that its patron fought in ancient times with the deity of that river, hurling stones at him to prevent his becoming master of the land to the north. The bar formed of shingle and the dunes which contract the entrance were regarded as evidences of this conflict.**

Beyond the southern bank of the river, Sidon sits enthroned as “the firstborn of Canaan.” In spite of this ambitious title it was at first nothing but a poor fishing village founded by Bel, the Agenor of the Greeks, on the southern slope of a spit of land which juts out obliquely towards the south-west.* It grew from year to year, spreading out over the plain, and became at length one of the most prosperous of the chief cities of the country—a “mother” in Phoenicia.**

The port, once so celebrated, is shut in by three chains of half-sunken reefs, which, running out from the northern end of the peninsula, continue parallel to the coast for some hundreds of yards: narrow passages in these reefs afford access to the harbour; one small island, which is always above water, occupies the centre of this natural dyke of rocks, and furnishes a site for a maritime quarter opposite to the continental city.* The necropolis on the mainland extends to the east and north, and consists of an irregular series of excavations made in a low line of limestone cliffs which must have been lashed by the waves of the Mediterranean long prior to the beginning of history. These tombs are crowded closely together, ramifying into an inextricable maze, and are separated from each other by such thin walls that one expects every moment to see them give way, and bury the visitors in the ruin. Many date back to a very early period, while all of them have been re-worked and re-appropriated over and over again. The latest occupiers were contemporaries of the Macedonian kings or the Roman Cæsars. Space was limited and costly in this region of the dead: the Sidonians made the best use they could of the tombs, burying in them again and again, as the Egyptians were accustomed to do in their cemeteries at Thebes and Memphis. The surrounding plain is watered by the “pleasant Bostrênos,” and is covered with gardens which are reckoned to be the most beautiful in all Syria—at least after those of Damascus: their praises were sung even in ancient days, and they had then earned for the city the epithet of “the flowery Sidon.” **

Here, also, an Astartê ruled over the destinies of the people, but a chaste and immaculate Astartê, a self-restrained and warlike virgin, sometimes identified with the moon, sometimes with the pale and frigid morning star.* In addition to this goddess, the inhabitants worshipped a Baal-Sidon, and other divinities of milder character—an Astartê Shem-Baal, wife of the supreme Baal, and Eshmun, a god of medicine—each of whom had his own particular temple either in the town itself or in some neighbouring village in the mountain. Baal delighted in travel, and was accustomed to be drawn in a chariot through the valleys of Phoenicia in order to receive the prayers and offerings of his devotees. The immodest Astartê, excluded, it would seem, from the official religion, had her claims acknowledged in the cult offered to her by the people, but she became the subject of no poetic or dolorous legend like her namesake at Byblos, and there was no attempt to disguise her innately coarse character by throwing over it a garb of sentiment. She possessed in the suburbs her chapels and grottoes, hollowed out in the hillsides, where she was served by the usual crowd of Ephébæ and sacred courtesans. Some half-dozen towns or fortified villages, such as Bitzîti,** the Lesser Sidon, and Sarepta, were scattered along the shore, or on the lowest slopes of the Lebanon.

Sidonian territory reached its limit at the Cape of Sarepta, where the high-lands again meet the sea at the boundary of one of those basins into which Phoenicia is divided. Passing beyond this cape, we come first upon a Tyrian outpost, the Town of Birds;* then upon the village of Nazana** with its river of the same name; beyond this upon a plain hemmed in by low hills, cultivated to their summits; then on tombs and gardens in the suburbs of Autu;*** and, further still, to a fleet of boats moored at a short distance from the shore, where a group of reefs and islands furnishes at one and the same time a site for the houses and temples of Tyre, and a protection from its foes.

It was already an ancient town at the beginning of the Egyptian conquest. As in other places of ancient date, the inhabitants rejoiced in stories of the origin of things in which the city figured as the most venerable in the world. After the period of the creating gods, there followed immediately, according to the current legends, two or three generations of minor deities—heroes of light and flame—who had learned how to subdue fire and turn it to their needs; then a race of giants, associated with the giant peaks of Kasios, Lebanon, Hermon, and Brathy;* after which were born two male children—twins: Samem-rum, the lord of the supernal heaven, and Usôos, the hunter. Human beings at this time lived a savage life, wandering through the woods, and given up to shameful vices.

Samemrum took up his abode among them in that region which became in later times the Tyrian coast, and showed them how to build huts, papyrus, or other reeds: Usôos in the mean time pursued the avocation of a hunter of wild beasts, living upon their flesh and clothing himself with their skins. A conflict at length broke out between the two brothers, the inevitable result of rivalry between the ever-wandering hunter and the husbandman attached to the soil.

Usôos succeeded in holding his own till the day when fire and wind took the part of his enemy against him.* The trees, shaken and made to rub against each other by the tempest, broke into flame from the friction, and the forest was set on fire. Usôos, seizing a leafy branch, despoiled it of its foliage, and placing it in the water let it drift out to sea, bearing him, the first of his race, with it.

Landing on one of the islands, he set up two menhirs, dedicating them to fire and wind that he might thenceforward gain their favour. He poured out at their base the blood of animals he had slaughtered, and after his death, his companions continued to perform the rites which he had inaugurated.

The town which he had begun to build on the sea-girt isle was called Tyre, the “Rock,” and the two rough stones which he had set up remained for a long time as a sort of talisman, bringing good luck to its inhabitants. It was asserted of old that the island had not always been fixed, but that it rose and fell, with the waves like a raft. Two peaks looked down upon it—the “Ambrosian Rocks”—between which grew the olive tree of Astartê, sheltered by a curtain of flame from external danger. An eagle perched thereon watched over a viper coiled round the trunk: the whole island would cease to float as soon as a mortal should succeed in sacrificing the bird in honour of the gods. Usôos, the Herakles, destroyer of monsters, taught the people of the coast how to build boats, and how to manage them; he then made for the island and disembarked: the bird offered himself spontaneously to his knife, and as soon as its blood had moistened the earth, Tyre rooted itself fixedly opposite the mainland. Coins of the Roman period represent the chief elements in this legend; sometimes the eagle and olive tree, sometimes the olive tree and the stelo, and sometimes the two stelæ only. From this time forward the gods never ceased to reside on the holy island; Astartê herself was born there, and one of the temples there showed to the admiration of the faithful a fallen star—an aerolite which she had brought back from one of her journeys.

Baal was called the Melkarth. king of the city, and the Greeks after» wards identified him with their Herakles. His worship was of a severe and exacting character: a fire burned perpetually in his sanctuary; his priests, like those of the Egyptians, had their heads shaved; they wore garments of spotless white linen, held pork in abomination, and refused permission to married women to approach the altars.*

Festivals, similar to those of Adonis at Byblos, were held in his honour twice a year: in the summer, when the sun burnt up the earth with his glowing heat, he offered himself as an expiatory victim to the solar orb, giving himself to the flames in order to obtain some mitigation of the severity of the sky;* once the winter had brought with it a refreshing coolness, he came back to life again, and his return was celebrated with great joy. His temple stood in a prominent place on the largest of the islands furthest away from the mainland. It served to remind the people of the remoteness of their origin, for the priests relegated its foundation almost to the period of the arrival of the Phoenicians on the shores of the Mediterranean. The town had no supply of fresh water, and there was no submarine spring like that of Arvad to provide a resource in time of necessity; the inhabitants had, therefore, to resort to springs which were fortunately to be found everywhere on the hillsides of the mainland. The waters of the well of Eas el-Aîn had been led down to the shore and dammed up there, so that boats could procure a ready supply from this source in time of peace: in time of war the inhabitants of Tyre had to trust to the cisterns in which they had collected the rains that fell at certain seasons.**

The strait separating the island from the mainland was some six or seven hundred yards in breadth,* less than that of the Nile at several points of its course through Middle Egypt, but it was as effective as a broader channel to stop the movement of an army: a fleet alone would have a chance of taking the city by surprise, or of capturing it after a lengthened siege.

Like the coast region opposite Arvad, the shore which faced Tyre, lying between the mouth of the Litany and ras el-Aîn, was an actual suburb of the city itself—with its gardens, its cultivated fields, its cemeteries, its villas, and its fortifications. Here the inhabitants of the island were accustomed to bury their dead, and hither they repaired for refreshment during the heat of the summer. To the north the little town of Mahalliba, on the southern bank of the Litâny, and almost hidden from view by a turn in the hills, commanded the approaches to the Bekaa, and the high-road to Coele-Syria.* To the south, at Ras el-Aîn, Old Tyre (Palastyrus) looked down upon the route leading into Galilee by way of the mountains.**

Eastwards Autu commanded the landing-places on the shore, and served to protect the reservoirs; it lay under the shadow of a rock, on which was built, facing the insular temple of Melkarth, protector of mariners, a sanctuary of almost equal antiquity dedicated to his namesake of the mainland.* The latter divinity was probably the representative of the legendary Samemrum, who had built his village on the coast, while Usôos had founded his on the ocean. He was the Baalsamîm of starry tunic, lord of heaven and king of the sun.

As was customary, a popular Astartê was associated with these deities of high degree, and tradition asserted that Melkarth purchased her favour by the gift of the first robe of Tyrian purple which was ever dyed. Priestesses of the goddess had dwellings in all parts of the plain, and in several places the caves are still pointed out where they entertained the devotees of the goddess. Behind Autu the ground rises abruptly, and along the face of the escarpment, half hidden by trees and brushwood, are the remains of the most important of the Tyrian burying-places, consisting of half-filled-up pits, isolated caves, and dark galleries, where whole families lie together in their last sleep. In some spots the chalky mass has been literally honeycombed by the quarrying gravedigger, and regular lines of chambers follow one another in the direction of the strata, after the fashion of the rock-cut tombs of Upper Egypt. They present a bare and dismal appearance both within and without. The entrances are narrow and arched, the ceilings low, the walls bare and colourless, unrelieved by moulding, picture, or inscription. At one place only, near the modern village of Hanaweh, a few groups of figures and coarsely cut stelae are to be found, indicating, it would seem, the burying-place of some chief of very early times.

These figures run in parallel lines along the rocky sides of a wild ravine. They vary from 2 feet 6 inches to 3 feet in height, the bodies being represented by rectangular pilasters, sometimes merely rough-hewn, at others grooved with curved lines to suggest the folds of the Asiatic garments; the head is carved full face, though the eyes are given in profile, and the summary treatment of the modelling gives evidence of a certain skill. Whether they are to be regarded as the product of a primitive Amorite art or of a school of Phoenician craftsmen, we are unable to determine. In the time of their prosperity the Tyrians certainly pushed their frontier as far as this region. The wind-swept but fertile country lying among the ramifications of the lowest spurs of the Lebanon bears to this day innumerable traces of their indefatigable industry—remains of dwellings, conduits and watercourses, cisterns, pits, millstones and vintage-troughs, are scattered over the fields, interspersed with oil and wine presses. The Phoenicians took naturally to agriculture, and carried it to such a high state of perfection as to make it an actual science, to which the neighbouring peoples of the Mediterranean were glad to accommodate their modes of culture in later times.*

Among no other people was the art of irrigation so successfully practised, and from such a narrow strip of territory as belonged to them no other cultivators could have gathered such abundant harvests of wheat and barley, and such supplies of grapes, olives, and other fruits. From Arvad to Tyre, and even beyond it, the littoral region and the central parts of the valleys presented a long ribbon of verdure of varying breadth, where fields of corn were blended with gardens and orchards and shady woods. The whole region was independent and self-supporting, the inhabitants having no need to address themselves to their neighbours in the interior, or to send their children to seek their fortune in distant lands. To insure prosperity, nothing was needed but a slight exercise of labour and freedom from the devastating influence of war.

The position of the country was such as to secure it from attack, and from the conflicts which laid waste the rest of Syria. Along almost the entire eastern border of the country the Lebanon was a great wall of defence running parallel to the coast, strengthened at each extremity by the additional protection of the rivers Nahr el-Kebîr and Litany. Its slopes were further defended by the forest, which, with its lofty trees and brushwood, added yet another barrier to that afforded by rocks and snow. Hunters’ or shepherds’ paths led here and there in tortuous courses from one side of the mountain to the other. Near the middle of the country two roads, practicable in all seasons, secured communications between the littoral and the plain of the interior. They branched off on either side from the central road in the neighbourhood of Tabakhi, south of Qodshu, and served the needs of the wooded province of Magara.* This region was inhabited by pillaging tribes, which the Egyptians called at one time Lamnana, the Libanites,** at others Shausu, using for them the same appellation as that which they bestowed upon the Bedouin of the desert.

The roads through this province ran under the dense shade afforded by oaks, cedars, and cypresses, in an obscurity favourable to the habits of the wolves and hyamas which infested it, and even of those thick-maned lions known to Asia at the time; and then proceeding in its course, crossed the ridge in the neighbourhood of the snow-peak called Shaua, which is probably the Sannîn of our times. While one of these roads, running north along the lake of Yamuneh and through the gorge of Akura, then proceeded along the Adonis* to Byblos, the other took a southern direction, and followed the Nahr el-Kelb to the sea.

Towards the mouth of the latter a wall of rock opposes the progress of the river, and leaves at length but a narrow and precipitous defile for the passage of its waters: a pathway cut into the cliff at a very remote date leads almost perpendicularly from the bottom of the precipice to the summit of the promontory. Commerce followed these short and direct routes, but invading hosts very rarely took advantage of them, although they offered access into the very heart of Phoenicia. Invaders would encounter here, in fact, a little known and broken country, lending itself readily to surprises and ambuscades; and should they reach the foot of the Lebanon range, they would find themselves entrapped in a region of slippery defiles, with steep paths at intervals cut into the rock, and almost inaccessible to chariots or horses, and so narrow in places that a handful of resolute men could have held them for a long time against whole battalions. The enemy preferred to make for the two natural breaches at the respective extremities of the line of defence, and for the two insular cities which flanked the approaches to them—Tyre in the case of those coming from Egypt, Arvad and Simyra for assailants from the Euphrates. The Arvadians, bellicose by nature, would offer strong resistance to the invader, and not permit themselves to be conquered without a brave struggle with the enemy, however powerful he might be.* When the disproportion of the forces which they could muster against the enemy convinced them of the folly of attempting an open conflict, their island-home offered them a refuge where they would be safe from any attacks.

Sometimes the burning and pillaging of their property on the mainland might reduce them to throw themselves on the mercy of their foes, but such submission did not last long, and they welcomed the slightest occasion for regaining their liberty. Conquered again and again on account of the smallness of their numbers, they were never discouraged by their reverses, and Phoenicia owed all its military history for a long period to their prowess. The Tyrians were of a more accommodating nature, and there is no evidence, at least during the early centuries of their existence, of the display of those obstinate and blind transports of bravery by which the Arvadians were carried away.*

Their foreign policy was reduced to a simple arithmetical question, which they discussed in the light of their industrial or commercial interests. As soon as they had learned from a short experience that a certain Pharaoh had at his disposal armies against which they could offer no serious opposition, they at once surrendered to him, and thought only of obtaining the greatest profit from the vassalage to which they were condemned. The obligation to pay tribute did not appear to them so much in the light of a burthen or a sacrifice, as a means of purchasing the right to go to and fro freely in Egypt, or in the countries subject to its influence. The commerce acquired by these privileges recouped them more than a hundredfold for all that their overlord demanded from them. The other cities of the coast—Sidon, Berytus, Byblos—usually followed the example of Tyre, whether from mercenary motives, or from their naturally pacific disposition, or from a sense of their impotence; and the same intelligent resignation with which, as we know, they accepted the supremacy of the great Egyptian empire, was doubtless displayed in earlier centuries in their submission to the Babylonians. Their records show that they did not accept this state of things merely through cowardice or indolence, for they are represented as ready to rebel and shake off the yoke of their foreign master when they found it incompatible with their practical interests. But their resort to war was exceptional; they generally preferred to submit to the powers that be, and to accept from them as if on lease the strip of coast-line at the base of the Lebanon, which served as a site for their warehouses and dockyards. Thus they did not find the yoke of the stranger irksome—the sea opening up to them a realm of freedom and independence which compensated them for the limitations of both territory and liberty imposed upon them at home.

The epoch which was marked by their first venture on the Mediterranean, and the motives which led to it, were alike unknown to them. The gods had taught them navigation, and from the beginning of things they had taken to the sea as fishermen, or as explorers in search of new lands.* They were not driven by poverty to leave their continental abode, or inspired thereby with a zeal for distant cruises. They had at home sufficient corn and wine, oil and fruits, to meet all their needs, and even to administer to a life of luxury. And if they lacked cattle, the abundance of fish within their reach compensated for the absence of flesh-meat.

Nor was it the number of commodiously situated ports on their coast which induced them to become a seafaring people, for their harbours were badly protected for the most part, and offered no shelter when the wind set in from the north, the rugged shore presenting little resource against the wind and waves in its narrow and shallow havens. It was the nature of the country itself which contributed more than anything else to make them mariners. The precipitous mountain masses which separate one valley from another rendered communication between them difficult, while they served also as lurking-places for robbers. Commerce endeavoured to follow, therefore, the sea-route in preference to the devious ways of this highwayman’s region, and it accomplished its purpose the more readily because the common occupation of sea-fishing had familiarised the people with every nook and corner on the coast. The continual wash of the surge had worn away the bases of the limestone cliffs, and the superincumbent masses tumbling down into the sea formed lines of rocks, hardly rising above the water-level, which fringed the headlands with perilous reefs, against which the waves broke continuously at the slightest wind. It required some bravery to approach them, and no little skill to steer one of the frail boats, which these people were accustomed to employ from the earliest times, scatheless amid the breakers. The coasting trade was attracted from Arvad successively to Berytus, Sidon, and Tyre, and finally to the other towns of the coast. It was in full operation, doubtless, from the VIth Egyptian dynasty onwards, when the Pharaohs no longer hesitated to embark troops at the mouth of the Nile for speedy transmission to the provinces of Southern Syria, and it was by this coasting route that the tin and amber of the north succeeded in reaching the interior of Egypt. The trade was originally, it would seem, in the hands of those mysterious Kefâtiu of whom the name only was known in later times. When the Phoenicians established themselves at the foot of the Lebanon, they had probably only to take the place of their predecessors and to follow the beaten tracks which they had already made. We have every reason to believe that they took to a seafaring life soon after their arrival in the country, and that they adapted themselves and their civilization readily to the exigencies of a maritime career.*

In their towns, as in most sea-ports, there was a considerable foreign element, both of slaves and freemen, but the Egyptians confounded them all under one name, Kefâtiu, whether they were Cypriotes, Asiatics, or Europeans, or belonged to the true Tyrian and Sidonian race. The costume of the Kafîti was similar to that worn by the people of the interior—the loin-cloth, with or without a long upper garment: while in tiring the hair they adopted certain refinements, specially a series of curls which the men arranged in the form of an aigrette above their foreheads. This motley collection of races was ruled over by an oligarchy of merchants and shipowners, whose functions were hereditary, and who usually paid homage to a single king, the representative of the tutelary god, and absolute master of the city.*

The industries pursued in Phoenicia were somewhat similar to those of other parts of Syria; the stuffs, vases, and ornaments made at Tyre and Sidon could not be distinguished from those of Hamath or of Carchemish.

All manufactures bore the impress of Babylonian influence, and their implements, weights, measures, and system of exchange were the same as those in use among the Chaldæans. The products of the country were, however, not sufficient to freight the fleets which sailed from Phoenicia every year bound for all parts of the known world, and additional supplies had to be regularly obtained from neighbouring peoples, who thus became used to pour into Tyre and Sidon the surplus of their manufactures, or of the natural wealth of their country. The Phoenicians were also accustomed to send caravans into regions which they could not reach in their caracks, and to establish trading stations at the fords of rivers, or in the passes over mountain ranges. We know of the existence of such emporia at Laish near the sources of the Jordan, at Thapsacus, and at Nisibis, and they must have served the purpose of a series of posts on the great highways of the world. The settlements of the Phoenicians always assumed the character of colonies, and however remote they might be from their fatherland, the colonists never lost the manners and customs of their native country. They collected together into their okels or storehouses such wares and commodities as they could purchase in their new localities, and, transmitting them periodically to the coast, shipped them thence to all parts of the world.

Not only were they acquainted with every part of the Mediterranean, but they had even made voyages beyond its limits. In the absence, however, of any specific records of their naval enterprise, the routes they followed must be a subject of conjecture. They were accustomed to relate that the gods, after having instructed them in the art of navigation, had shown them the way to the setting sun, and had led them by their example to make voyages even beyond the mouths of the ocean. El of Byblos was the first to leave Syria; he conquered Greece and Egypt, Sicily and Libya, civilizing their inhabitants, and laying the foundation of cities everywhere. The Sidonian Astartê, with her head surmounted by the horns of an ox, was the next to begin her wanderings over the inhabited earth. Melkarth completed the task of the gods by discovering and subjugating those countries which had escaped the notice of his predecessors. Hundreds of local traditions, to be found on all the shores of the Mediterranean down to Roman times, bore witness to the pervasive influence of the old Canaanite colonisation. At Cyprus, for instance, wo find traces of the cultus of Kinyras, King of Byblos and father of Adonis; again, at Crete, it is the daughter of a Prince of Sidon, Buropa, who is carried off by Zeus under the form of a bull; it was Kadmos, sent forth to seek Buropa, who visited Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades before building Thebes in Boeotia and dying in the forests of Illyria. In short, wherever the Phoenicians had obtained a footing, their audacious activity made such an indelible impression upon the mind of the native inhabitants that they never forgot those vigorous thick-set men with pale faces and dark beards, and soft and specious speech, who appeared at intervals in their large and swift sailing vessels. They made their way cautiously along the coast, usually keeping in sight of land, making sail when the wind was favourable, or taking to the oars for days together when occasion demanded it, anchoring at night under the shelter of some headland, or in bad weather hauling their vessels up the beach until the morrow. They did not shrink when it was necessary from trusting themselves to the open sea, directing their course by the Pole-star;* in this manner they often traversed long distances out of sight of land, and they succeeded in making in a short time voyages previously deemed long and costly.

It is hard to say whether they were as much merchants as pirates—indeed, they hardly knew themselves—and their peaceful or warlike attitude towards vessels which they encountered on the seas, or towards the people whose countries they frequented, was probably determined by the circumstances of the moment.* If on arrival at a port they felt themselves no match for the natives, the instinct of the merchant prevailed, and that of the pirate was kept in the background. They landed peaceably, gained the good will of the native chief and his nobles by small presents, and spreading out their wares, contented themselves, if they could do no better, with the usual advantage obtained in an exchange of goods.

They were never in a hurry, and would remain in one spot until they had exhausted all the resources of the country, while they knew to a nicety how to display their goods attractively before the expected customer. Their wares comprised weapons and ornaments for men, axes, swords, incised or damascened daggers with hilts of gold or ivory, bracelets, necklaces, amulets of all kinds, enamelled vases, glass-work, stuffs dyed purple or embroidered with gay colours. At times the natives, whose cupidity was excited by the exhibition of such valuables, would attempt to gain possession of them either by craft or by violence. They would kill the men who had landed, or attempt to surprise the vessel during the night. But more often it was the Phoenicians who took advantage of the friendliness or the weakness of their hosts.