266 THE MEDITERRANEAN, PflYSICAL AND HISTORICAL. 



large higlit between the island ofDjerba and the mainland, on the shores 

 of which are the rnins of the ancient city of Meninx, which, to judge by 

 the abundance of Greek marble found there, must have carried on au 

 important commerce with the Levant. 



The scheme has now been entirely abandoned. Nothing but the mania 

 for cutting through isthmuses all over the world which followed the 

 brilliant success achieved at Suez can explain its having been started 

 at all. Of course, no mere mechanical operation is impossible in these 

 days; but the mind refuses to reaMze the possibility of vessels circulat- 

 ing in a region which produces nothing, or that so small a sheet of water 

 in the immensity of the Sahara could have any appreciable effect in 

 modifying the climate of its shores. 



The eastern basin is much more indented and cut up into separate 

 seas than the western one. It was therefore better adapted for the com- 

 mencement of commerce and navigation. Its high mountains were land- 

 marks for the unpracticed sailor, and its numerous islands and harbors 

 afforded shelter for his frail bark, and so facilitated communication be- 

 tween one point and another. 



The advance of civilization naturally took place along the axis of 

 this sea, Phoenicia, Greece, and Italy being successively the great nur- 

 series of human knowledge and progress. Phcenicia had the glory of 

 opening out the path of ancient commerce, for its position in the Levant 

 gave it a natural command of the Mediterranean, and its people sought 

 the profits of trade from every nation which had a seaboard on the 

 three continents washed by this sea. Pha'uicia was already a nation 

 before the Jews entered the Promised Land ; and when they did so, they 

 carried on inland traffic as middlemen to the Ph(enicians. Many of 

 the commercial centers on the shores of the Mediterranean were founded 

 before Greece and Kome acquired importance in history. Homer refers 

 to them as daring traders nearly a thousand years before the Christian 

 era. 



For many centuries the commerce of the world was limited to the 

 Mediterranean, and when it extended in the direction of the East it 

 was the merchants of the Adriatic, of Genoa, and of Pisa who brought 

 the merchandise of India, at an enormous cost, to the Mediterranean 

 by land, and who monopolized the carrying trade by sea. It was thus 

 that the elephant trade of India, the caravan traffic through Babylon 

 and Palmyra, as well as the Arab kajilchs, became united with the 

 Occidental commerce of the Mediterranean. 



As civilization and commerce extended westward, mariners began to 

 overcome their dread of the vast solitudes of the ocean beyond the Pil- 

 lars of Hercules, and the discovery of America by Columbus and the 

 circum-navigation of Africa by the Portuguese changed entirely the cur- 

 rent of trade as well as increased its magnitude, and so relegated the 



