82 ON THE DATE AND ORIGIN 
over the islands of the 7Zgean, we meet them on the sacred shores of 
Palestine ; and the readers of Holy Writ will recognise in the sons of 
Anak37 and the denounced Philistine,?*% in the Canaanite and the 
Sidonian, the aboriginal mariners of the Mediterranean Ocean. The 
Word of Jehovah and the legends of the heathen attest the maritime 
pre-eminence of the merchants of Sidon and Tyre, of Askalon and 
of Joppa ; and it is interesting alike to the geographer and the his- 
torian, the devout and the philosophic,?* to trace the causes of that 
opulence which raised the Grecian buccaneer to the Pheenician mer- . 
chant, and placed the devoted Tyrian amongst “the honourable of 
the earth.” 
The district that lies between the precipitous front of Lebanon and 
the Mediterranean Gulph does not exceed the width of a few miles, 
and yields its produce with reluctance? to the labour and inge- 
nuity of the husbandman, or offers a scanty pasturage to the in- 
glorious shepherd ; and the first settlers on its coast would with 
difficulty establish a colony without the aid of navigation. The 
inaccessible heights of Lebanon presented a boundary the subjugation 
of which would appear useless,+° and beyond which conquest would 
not less addicted to piracy and plunder, being Carians and Phoenicians, and 
these inhabited the greater number of the islands.” 
37 The learned biblist Bochart tells us, that the most probable etymology 
of Phoenicia, or Phoenice, is Phene anak, i.e. descendants of Anak. 
ss That the Phoenicians inhabited Askalon, a principal city of the Philis- 
tines, we have the testimony of Herodotus; and that the inhabitants of 
Askalon were of sea-faring habits is also to be inferred from the same autho- 
rity : and he attributes the establishment of the worship of Venus, both in 
Cyprus and in Cytherea, off the coast of Peloponnesus, to that maritime 
people, the evrevéey applies especially to Askalon, as does the rzurus of the 
succeeding sentence—ex ravrns rns Zugins covrec.—Herodotus, Book i. 105. 
8° The plains of Esdralon, of Galilee, and of Jordan, as well as those on 
the coast, rapidly decline into a state of sterility if neglected by the hand of 
art ; and lying low, are, in the hot season, denuded of pasturage, which, 
however, is renewed as suddenly by the fall of rain, or perhaps a reduction of 
temperature.—Burkhardt and Buckingham, passim. 
«0 The mountains of Lebanon are of various aspect : the Peak of Sanin is 
majestic ; his feet washed in the ocean, and uprearing his hoary and time- 
stricken head into the presence of his maker, he seems to have inspired, 
since time was, the rapt enthusiasm of the poets, and the impetuous rhetoric 
of the prophets. Winter on his brow ; his shoulders clad in the mantle of 
autumn ; spring around his loins, and summer at his feet ; he stands 5000yds. 
above the waters: and yields in the same region, and in the same month, the 
vegetation of the four quarters of the globe and the four seasons of the year. 
The plains pressed by the industry of man yield,in places,corn, barley,cotton, 
maize, sesamum, silk, oranges, bananas, lemons, peaches, apricots, and figs. 
