76 THE OCEAN RIVER 



progress of civilized man in the Americas as well as in Europe 

 is each year being pushed back thousands of years before 

 Christ. 



Now who were these Phoenician sailors who took off from 

 Tyre and Sidon for the Pillars of Hercules? They were Hit- 

 tites, who had migrated overland from sea coasts adjacent to 

 the Persian Gulf, following what is called the ''fertile crescent" 

 of hill country stretching northwest from Persia through Syria 

 to the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. One of many such 

 migratory groups, they in particular took to the sea and acted 

 as the carriers and traders to distant lands for the inland 

 peoples of the Near East. The Phoenicians were a tough and 

 hardy race of merchant-adventurers who later developed great 

 artistic skills in metal and glass and weaving to further their 

 grip on the Mediterranean trade with the still barbarous Greek 

 tribes of the Aegean. The Greeks called them the ''Red Men" 

 because of their swarthy sea tan. The Red Men of the wild 

 west of the classic world pushed beyond the Aegean, the whole 

 length of the Mediterranean. They were at home anywhere in 

 a bottom with oars and a sail, and like the later Norsemen 

 regarded neither distance nor time so long as they could hound 

 along the coasts and eventually get back with goods and gear. 



Although the romantic stories of the Fortunate Isles, of 

 Atlantis and the far Hesperides, were attractive as mere fables, 

 quite probably the bold and experienced Phoenicians regarded 

 such legends as founded on fact and left the literary apprecia- 

 tion to scholars. At any rate, undeterred by fears of landsmen 

 or doubts of the learned, they were out beyond the Straits of 

 Gibraltar a thousand years before Christ. The pull and power 

 of the unknown ocean river was too strong for them. 



This was no accidental undertaking. As moderns thinking 

 in terms of steam and engines we too readily presume that 

 long and difficult journeys were impossible before our own 

 immediate time. But this is just a false way of thinking, for 



