The Birthplace of Commerce and Letters. i) 
of the Jordan, with the lake of Gallilee at the north and the 
Dead sea at the south, Palestine, the land of the Jews. Beyond 
the Jordan lay Lebanon and Anti-lebanon; on the sea-coast 
the land of Tyre and Sidon. 
By its position, Syria was the great battle-field of Africa and 
Asia. Bordering on the Mediterranean, it has been the means 
of transmitting the civilizing influences of the east to the west, 
and generations later that of the west to the east. 
The great plateau of Syria stops suddenly at some distance 
from the Mediterranean and encircles on a large curve a belt of 
coast land, sometimes expanding into large plains cut up by 
rocky spurs into narrow valleys opening into the sea and in- 
habited by the Phenecians. Good harbors and timber from the 
mountains of Lebanon and the outlook on the sea invited the 
inhabitants to launch on the Mediterranean their vessels thereto- 
fore confined to the rivers of Mesopotamia. 
The Phenecians, like many other people in modern times, 
began their mercantile career by plundering the neighboring 
coasts and: villages. They rapidly increased in number, and 
soon wealthy cities sprang up on the sea-coast, each city with 
its adjacent territory governed by its king. The Phenecians sent 
out colonies, east to the Persian gulf and Red sea; west to 
Greece, Carthage, Sicily, Italy, and Spain. They sailed through 
the straits of Gibralter northward and southward into the 
Atlantic and became merchants and traders, exchanging their 
manufactures of glass and Tyrian dyes for the goods and precious 
stones of the east, the wheat and grain of Carthage, the gold and 
silver of Spain, the tin and copper of Great Britain. 
The country was frequently conquered by Assyria, Babylon, 
and Egypt without affecting its prosperity; but when Greece 
became a maritime power the Phenecians were driven from the _ 
eastern Mediterranean, and later the Romans drove them from 
‘the western Mediterranean, each state thus protecting its own 
trade and commerce. 
To Phenecia we owe the development of navigation and com- 
merce, the alphabet and, probably, weights and measures. 
Persia and India. 
Three thousand five hundred years ago the Aryans, emigrating 
from the cradle lands of their race, passed through Syria into 
2—Nart, Grog. Maa., you. VI, 1894, 
