Before Chrift 314* 81 



disfigured accounts of it tranfmitted to us by the ignorance of fucceed- 

 ing writers, to have been perfedly juft. 



Such were the philofophical, geographical, and commercial, difco- 

 veries of Pytheas, whofe voyage, even when diverted of the imaginary 

 extenfion of it to Iceland by modern authors, if we duely confider the 

 flate of geography, aflronomy, and navigation, in that age, may with- 

 out hefitation be pronounced equal for enterprife and conducSt to any 

 of the circumnavigations of our own age, not even excepting the voyage 

 of Captain Cook into the inhofpitable and forbidding regions of the 

 Antardlic ocean *. 



We know little or nothing of the advantages derived from the difco- 

 veries of Pytheas by the Maflilians. It is, however, very probable, that 

 they were the foundation of the great trade in tin, which they after- 

 wards carried on with Britain. 



314 — Tyre, notwithftanding the ruin brought upon her by Alexan- 

 der, again lifted up her head : again the little ifland was covered with 

 buildings, which, to accommodate the crowded population, were reared 

 aloft in the air to a prodigious height f. The merchants, who in their 

 childhood had been faved from the butchery of Alexander's army at 

 Carthage and Sidon, recovered the commerce of their fathers, and Tyre 

 refumed its rank as the firft mercantile city in the eaflern part of the 

 Mediterranean. It had recovered fuch a fhare of the Oriental trade, 

 (or rather the trade with the fouth part of Arabia) which was condudl- 

 ed by means of land carriage from Rhinocorura on the confines of 

 Egypt and Phoenicia to the Elanitic branch of the Red fea, and thence 

 by a navigation of feventy days to the mouth of that fea, that it actual- 

 ly fupported a competition with Alexandria, though reared and nourifh- 

 ed by the foftering hands of viftorious fovereigns, and fed with the 

 plunder of the Eafl : fo difficult is it to turn afide the ftream of com- 



* This great philofopher and difcoverer has cifm and philofophical fcrutiny of the prefent age. 

 horn an ample fhare of the malevolence and de- And it will not be thought out of place to ob- 

 traftion ufually attendant on real merit. He has ferve here, that ' the academy of Marfeille, deriv- 

 been accufed of grofs and intentional falfification * ing a worthy pride from this fpirit of enterprife 

 by Strabo and forr ■ other antient writers of great ♦ in their ancellors, animated with a liberality and 

 abilities, merely becaufe tlie fafts, which he truely ' noblenefs of fentiment which nothing but an in- 

 related, were incompreheniible to their very limit- ' ward confcioufnefs of kindred merit could give, 

 ed knowlege of the laws of nature and the uni- 'have this year, (1787) in a manner that does 

 verfe. But, on the other hand, Eratofthenes, one ' them great honour, propofed, as a fubjeft for a 

 of the moil judicious and accurate writers of anti- ' prize, the euloge of the Britifli navigator Cook.' 

 quity, confidered the work of Pytheas as an oracle: [_Governor Po-wnal's Notices of the Provincia Ro- 

 and even Strabo reluftantly does him the juftice to maim of Gaul, 1787.] 



credit his account of the northern nations, of the The befl account of Pytheas that I have fees 



truth of which, by the bye, he was no competent is in Fofler's Voyages in the North, B. i, c. 2. 

 judge. It is little to the credit of fomc modern f According to Strabo, [Z,. xvi, p. 1C98] the 



writers that they have implicitly followed thofe houfes of Tyre were faid to be higher in his time 



antient authors in abufing the Captain Cook of an- than thofe of Rome ; and there it was neceffary 



liquity. His charafter, and the mercantile enter- to reftrain builders by law from exceeding the 



prifing fpirit of his countrymen, are worthy of a height of I'eventy feet. See Gibbon, V, v, JB. 287, 



reftoration to due honour by the hiftorical criti- ed. 1792. 



Vol. I. L 



