43 o TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



Solomon vifited Eloth and Ezion-gaber* in perfon, and for- 

 tified them. He collected a number of pilots, fhipwrights, 

 and mariners, difperfed by his father's conquefl of Edom, 

 molt of whom had taken refuge in Tyre and Sidon, the 

 commercial dates in the Mediterranean. Hiram fupplied 

 him with failors in abundance ; but the failors fo furnilhcd 

 from Tyre were not capable of performing the fervice 

 which Solomon required, without the direction of pilots and 

 mariners ufed to the navigation of the Arabian Gulf and 

 Indian Ocean. Such were thofe mariners who formerly li- 

 ved in Edom, whom Solomon had now collected in Eloth 

 and Ezion-gaber. 



This laft-mentioned navigation was very different in all 

 refpeets from that of the Mediterranean, which, in relpeft 

 to the former, might be compared to a pond, every fide be- 

 in o- confined with mores little diuant the one from the o- 

 ther ; even that fmall extent of fea was fo full of iflands, 

 that there was much greater art required in the pilot to a- 

 void land than to reach it. It was, befides, fubjecl to vari- 

 able winds, being to the northward of 30 of latitude, the 

 limits to which Providence hath confined thofe winds all o- 

 ver the globe ; whereas the navigation of the Indian Ocean 

 was governed by laws more convenient and regular, though 

 altogether different from thofe that obtained in the Medi- 

 terranean. Before I proceed, it will be neceffary to explain 

 this phenomenon. 



It is known to all thofe who are ever fo little verfant in 

 the hiilory of Egypt, that the wind from the north prevails 



in 



* 2 Chron. chap, viii. ver .17. 



