MEANING OF THE WORD TAKSHISH. 41 



limits of Assyria, he came to the great mountaines of Ange, LlB - * 

 which perchance is Taurus, which hilles be on the left hand 

 of Cilicia, and that he entred into all the Castells, where he Lege nine, 

 assembled all his forces ; having destroyed tha.t famous Citie 27. 

 of Melithi, he ruined all the children of Tharsis and of 

 Israeli, which were ioyning vnto the desart, and those which 

 were in the South, towards the land of Cellon, and from 

 thence passed Euphrates ; but as I have saide, that which is 

 so written of Tharsis, cannot be applied to the Citie of ^^ OTin 

 Tarsus. Theodoret and some others, following the inter 

 pretation of the 70, in some places they set Tharsis in 

 Affrike, saying it was the same Citie which was aunciently tLnus^iMd&quot;, 

 called Carthage, and is now the kingdome of Tunis ; and 

 they say that lonas ment to go thether, when, as the scrip 

 ture reports, that he fled from the Lord into Tharsis. 

 Others pretend that Tharsis is a certaine countrie of the 

 Indies, wherevnto it seemes that S. lerome is inclined. I will cei. ad 

 not now decide these opinions, but I holde that in this case 

 the scripture doth not alwaies signifie one region or certaine 

 part of the world. It is true that the wise men or Kings 

 that came to worship Christ were of the East; and the 

 scripture saith they were of Saba, Esia, and Madian. And 

 some learned men holde that they were of Ethiopia, Arabia, 

 and Persia ; and yet the Psalmist and the Church sings 

 them, te The Kings of Tharsis shall bring presents.&quot; Wee 

 agree then with S. lerome, that Tharsis is a word that hath 

 many and divers significations in the scripture. Sometimes 

 it signifies the Crisolite, or lacinth stone, sometimes a 

 certaine region of the Indies, sometimes the sea, which is of 

 the colour of a lacinth by the reverberation of the sunne. 

 But the same Doctor doth with reason deny that Tharsis is 

 any region of the Indies whither lonas would fly, seeing 

 that parting from loppa, it had beene impossible to saile 

 vnto the Indies by that sea, for that loppa, which at this 

 day wee call laffa, is no port of the red Sea, ioyning to the 



