174 Druidism in connection with Wiitshire. 
sowed corn; that they waited till harvest,and when they had obtained 
supplies of provision, again put to sea. Having thus navigated for 
two years, in the third they arrived at the Pillars of Hercules, . 
(the Straits of Gibraltar) and returned safely to Egypt. They 
stated on their return that they had sailed entirely round Africa, 
and had the sun on their right hand.’ This fact appears to me incre- 
dible, but it may not to another. It was in this manner Africa was 
known for the first time.” 
When this historical event, (which has been ascribed to the en- 
terprize of the Portuguese about two thousand years afterwards, 
and which discovered the way to India by sea), is coupled with the 
superiority in numbers of the Phcenician fleet which accompanied 
Xerxes in his invasion of Greece, all doubt as to the ability of the 
Pheenicians to discover and hold commercial intercourse with Britain 
and Ireland is reraoved. We can now better comprehend the 
glowing description of the prophets in regard to Tyre, “Say unto 
Tyrus, O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art 
a merchant of the people for many isles :’—‘the ships of Tarshish 
did sing in praise of thy commerce, and thou wert replenished and 
made glorious in every part of the ocean.’”—‘ When thy wares 
went forth out of the seas, thou fillest many people; thou didst 
enrich the kings of the earth with the multitude of thy riches and 
thy merchandize.’””*—* Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; 
every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the 
diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the 
emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy ta- 
brets and of thy pipes.”* And similar is the language of Isaiah; 
“Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, the crowning city, 
whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of 
the earth.’”* 
It cannot be doubted that the Phcenicians, according to the cus- 
tom of antiquity, introduced their religious worship and deities into 
the countries which they colonized, on the Red Sea, the coasts of 
Syria, and afterwards among the Celtae, particularly in Ireland and 
Britain. Their divinities and the worship which they rendered to 
1 Or to the North. 2 Ezekiel xxyii. 3 Do. xxviii. 4 Tsaiah xxiii, 8. 
