106 PHOENICIA. 



There was a time when the waters of the Mediter- 

 ranean were silent and hare ; when nothing disturbed 

 the solitude of that blue and tideless sea but the weed 

 which floated on its surface and the gull which touched 

 it with its wing. 



A tribe of the Canaanites, or people of the plain, 

 driven hard by their foes, fled over the Lebanon and 

 took possession of a narrow strip of land, shut off 

 by itself between the mountains and the sea. 



The agricultural resources of the little country were 

 soon outgrown, and the Phoenicians were forced to 

 gather a harvest from the water. They invented the 

 fishing-line and net ; and when the fish could no 

 longer be caught from the shore, they had to follow 

 them out to sea or starve. They hollowed trunks 

 of trees with axe and fire into canoes ; they bound logs 

 of wood together to form a raft, with a bush stuck in 

 it for a sail. The Lebanon mountains supplied them 

 with timber ; in time they discovered how to make 

 boats with keels, and to sheathe them with copper 

 which they found also in their mountains. From those 

 heights of Lebanon the island of Cyprus could plainly 

 be seen, and the current assisted them across. They 

 colonized the island ; it supplied them with pitch, 

 timber, copper, and hemp, everything that was required 

 in the architecture of a ship. With smacks and cut- 

 ters they followed the tunny fish in their migrations ; 

 they discovered villages on other coasts, pillaged them 

 and carried off their inhabitants as slaves. Some of 

 these, when they had learnt the language, offered to 

 pay a ransom for their release ; the arrangement was 

 accomplished under oath, and presents as tokens of 

 good-will were afterwards exchanged. Each party was 

 pleased to obtain something which his own country 



