MINES OF CHAP. ii. 



whatever was collected was chiefly conveyed to 

 Nubia and Egypt, where a great part of it re- 

 mained till advantageous occasions offered of 

 exchanging it for the tempting productions of 

 Phoenicia and Carthage on one side, and for 

 those of India and Arabia on the other. Both 

 sacred and profane writers unite in their testi- 

 mony of the riches which were collected at a 

 remote period on the eastern part of Africa. 

 Ezekiel \ when speaking of the commerce of 

 Tyre, enumerates the places in Africa which 

 supplied the Phoenician marts, and names the 

 commodities and the districts from whence they 

 came, in a way which shows they were in his 

 days familiar to the Hebrew people. 



As soon as the Greeks obtained some know- 

 ledge of the wealth of those countries, they seem 

 to have been wonderfully impressed with the im- 

 mense riches they contained. Agatharchidas 2 , 

 who wrote about 170 years before our era, says, 

 " The Sabaeans excel not only the neighbouring 

 barbarians, but all other people, in their wealth 

 and splendour, for they receive a higher price 

 for. the same quantity of their wares than any 

 other traders. As their remote situation pro- 

 tects them from the plunder of enemies, they 

 have heaped together immense masses of the 



1 Ezekiel, cap. xxvii. v. 21 24. 



2 Agatharchidas de Rubro Mari, p. 65, in Geogr. Min. Hudo, 

 vol. i. 



