PEARLS. 87 
Let us now consider the Pearl, with reference to 
its value in a commercial point of view. 
As early as the days of Solomon, a considerable 
trade was carried on by the Phenicians of Sidon and 
Tyre, who, both in their manners and policy, re- 
sembled the great commercial states of modern 
Europe. Among the various branches of their 
commerce, that with India for pearls may be con- 
sidered as one of the most lucrative and most 
considerable. Having wrested from the Idumzans 
some commodious harbours towards the bottom of 
the Arabian Gulf, they rendered them the great em- 
poriums of Oriental commerce, whence they diffused 
these costly productions, in common with many 
others, along the eastern and southern coasts of 
Africa. The distance, however, from the Arabian 
Gulf was considerable, and the conveyance of goods 
by land carriage attended with so much incon- 
venience, that these enterprising people at length 
took possession of Rhinoculura, the nearest port 
in the Mediterranean to the Arabian Gulf. Thither 
all the commodities from India were readily con- 
veyed, re-shipped, and transported by an easy 
navigation to Tyre, and by “her merchants who 
were as princes, and her traffickers the honourable of 
the earth,” distributed throughout the world. But 
at length the declining glory of the merchant city 
