42 THE FAIR IONIA. 



closed land ; and this Chinese policy had not heen 

 adopted from superstitious motives. The first ships 

 which sailed that sea were pirates who had kidnapped 

 and plundered the dwellers on the coast. The govern- 

 ment had therefore in self-defence placed a garrison at 

 Rhacotis harbour, with orders to kill or enslave any- 

 stranger who should land. When the Phoenicians 

 from pirates had become merchants they were allowed 

 to trade with Egypt by way of land, and with this 

 they were content. It was left for another people to 

 open up the trade by sea. 



Ionia was the fairest province of Asiatic Greece. 

 It lay opposite to Athens, its mother land. The same 

 soft blue waters, the same fragrant breezes caressed 

 their shores by turn. It was celebrated by the 

 poets as one of the gardens of the world. There 

 the black soil granted a rich harvest, and the fruit 

 hung heavily on the branches. It was the birth- 

 place of poetry, of history, of philosophy and of art. 

 It was there that the Homeric poems were composed. 

 It was there that men first cast off the chains of 

 authority and sought in Nature the materials of a creed. 



It was, however, as a seafaring and commercial 

 people that the Ionians first obtained renown. They 

 served on board Phoenician vessels, and laboured in 

 the dockyards of Tyre and Sidon until they learnt how 

 to build the " sea-horses " for themselves, and how to 

 navigate by that small but constant star which the 

 Tyrians had discovered in the constellation of the Little 

 Bear. They took to the sea on their own account, and 

 in Egypt they found a good market. The wine and oil 

 of Palestine, which the Phoenicians imported, were ex- 

 pensive luxuries ; the lower classes drank only the 

 fermented sap of the palm tree and barley beer; and 



