TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 879 
there is a band of rock between the sea and the basin of the chotts, through which 
the former never could have penetrated in modern times. It ismuch more probable 
that Lake Triton was the large bight between the Island of Djerba and the main- 
land, on the shores of which are the ruins of the ancient city of Meninx, which, to 
judge by the abundance of Greek marble found there, must haye carried on an 
important commerce with the Levant. 
The scheme has now been entirely abandoned; nothing but the mania for cut- 
ting through isthmuses all over the world which followed the brilliant success 
achieved at Suez can explain its having been started at all. Of course, no mere 
mechanical operation is impossible in these days, but the mind refuses to realise the 
possibility of vessels circulating in a region which produces nothing, or that so 
small a sheet of water in the immensity of the Sahara could have any appreciable 
effect in modifying the climate of its shores. 
The Eastern Basin is much more indented and cut up into separate seas than the 
Western one ; it was therefore better adapted for the commencement of commerce 
and navigation ; its-high mountains were landmarks for the unpractised sailor, and 
its numerous islands and harbours afforded shelter for his frail barque, and so facili- 
tated communication between one point and another. 
The advance of civilisation naturally took place along the axis of this sea, 
Pheenicia, Greece, and Italy being successively the great nurseries of human know- 
ledge and progress. Phcenicia had the glory of opening out the path of ancient 
commerce, for its position in the Levant gave it a natural command of the Mediter- 
_ ranean, and its people sought the profits of trade from every nation which had a 
_ seaboard on the three continents washed by this sea. Phoenicia was already a 
_ nation before the Jews entered the Promised Land, and when they did so they 
_ carried on inland traffic as middlemen to the Phoenicians. Many of the com- 
mercial centres on the shores of the Mediterranean were founded before Greece and 
OE 
Rome acquired importance in history. Homer refers to them as daring traders 
nearly a thousand years before the Christian era. 
__Formany centuries the commerce of the world was limited to the Mediterranean, 
and when it extended in the direction of the Hast it was the merchants of the 
Adriatic, of Genoa, and of Pisa who brought the merchandise of India, at an enor- 
mous cost, to the Mediterranean by land, and who monopolised the carrying trade 
_ by sea. It was thus that the elephant trade of India, the caravan traffic through 
: Babylon and Palmyra, as well as the Arab kajfilehs, became united with the occi- 
dental commerce of the Mediterranean. 
: As civilisation and commerce extended westwards, mariners began to overcome 
: their dread of the vast solitudes of the ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and 
the discovery of America by Columbus, and the cireumnavigation of Africa by 
the Portuguese, changed entirely the current of trade as well as increased its mag- 
nitude, and so relegated the Mediterranean, which had hitherto been the central 
sea of human intercourse, to a position of secondary importance. 
Time will not permit me to enter into further details regarding the physical 
geography of this region, and its history is a subject so vast that a few episodes of 
it are all that I can possibly attempt. It is intimately connected with that of 
every other country in the world, and here were successively evolved all the 
great dramas of the past and some of the most important events of less distant 
ages. 
As I have already said, long before the rise of Greece and Rome its shores and 
islands were the seat of an advanced civilisation. Phoenicia had sent out her 
pacific colonies to the remotest parts, and not insignificant vestiges of their handi- 
craft still exist to excite our wonder and admiration. We have the megalithic 
temples of Malta sacred to the worship of Baal, the generative god, and Ashtoreth, 
the conceptive goddess, of the universe. The three thousand nurhagi of Sardinia, 
- round towers of admirable masonry, intended probably for defence in case of sud- 
_ den attack, and the so-called giant graves, were as great a mystery to classical 
authors as they are to us at the present day. Menorca has its talayots, tumuli 
somewhat analogous to, but of ruder construction than, the nurhagi, more than 
200 groups of which exist in various parts of the island ; with these are associated 
