386 DIVISION I. VERTEBRAL ANIMALS.— CLASS I. MAMMALIA. 
carried on a considerable trade with the lands and nations beyond the gates 
of the Red Sea. Their trade in the direction of the Persian Gulf was no 
less extensive. Through the Syrian Desert, where Palmyra, their chief 
station or emporium proudly rose above the surrounding sands, their cara- 
vans slowly wandered to the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, to provide 
Nineveh and Babylon with the costly merchandise of Sidon and Tyre. Fol- 
lowing the course of the great Mesopotamian streams, they reached the 
shores of the Persian Gulf, where they owned the ports of Tylos and 
Aradus, and the rich pearl islands of Bahrein, and, having loaded their 
empty camels with the produce of Iran and Arabia, returned by the same 
way to the shores of the Mediterranean. Wow far their ships may have 
ventured beyond the mouth of the Persian Gulf is unknown; but the re- 
searches of the learned Orientalists, Gesenius, Benfey, and Lassen, render it 
extremely probable that, taking advantage of the regularly changing mon- 
soons, they sailed through the Straits of Ormus to the coast of Malabar. 
The progress of the Phaenician race in the technical arts, as well as in the 
astronomical and mathematical sciences, so highly important for the improve- 
ment of their navigation, was no less remarkable for the age in which they 
livetl, than the vast extension of a commercial intercourse which reached from 
Britain to the Indus, and from the Black Sea to the Senegal. They wove 
the finest linen, and knew how to dye it with the most splendid purple. 
They were unsurpassed in the workmanship of metals, and possessed the 
secret of manufacturing white and colored glass, which their caravans and 
ships exchanged for the produce of the north and of the south. By the 
invention of the alphabet, which, with many other useful sciences and arts, 
they communicated to the Greeks and other nations with whom they traded, 
they no less contributed to the progress of mankind than by the humanizing 
influence of commerce. 
Thus, when we consider the services which these merchant-princes of an- 
tiquity rendered to their contemporaries, wherever their flag was seen or 
their caravans appeared, the annihilation of the maritime power of Tyre by 
Alexander (332 B. C.), and the destruction of Carthage by the Romans 
(146 B. C.), must strike us as events calamitous to the whole human race. 
Had the Carthaginians, so distinguished by their commercial spirit and ardor 
for discovery, triumphed over the semi-barbarous Romans, who, then at 
least, had not yet learned to imitate the arts of plundered Greece, there is 
every probability that some Punic Columbus would have discovered America 
at least a thousand years sooner, and the world at this day be in possession 
of many secrets still unknown, and destined to contribute to the comforts or 
enjoyments of our descendants. 
In the times of Homer, when the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic had long 
