3 66 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



ted, accounts which we have of them, all is power, fplen- 

 dour, and riches, attended by the luxury which was the 

 necelTary confequence, without any clue or thread left us 

 by which we can"" remount, or be conducted, to the fource 

 or fountain whence this variety of wealth had flowed ; 

 without ever being able to arrive at a period, when thefe 

 people were poor and mean, or even in a Itate of mediocri- 

 ty, or upon a footing with European nations. 



The facred fcriptures, the mofl ancient, as well as the 

 mofl credible of all hiltories, reprefent Paleltine, of which 

 they particularly treat, in the earliefl ages, as not only full of 

 poliflied, powerful, and orderly ftates, but abounding alfo 

 in filver and gold *, in a greater proportion than is to be 

 found this day in any flate in Europe, though immenfely 

 rich dominions in a new world have been added to the 

 pofTemon of that territory, which furnifhed the greateft 

 quantity of gold and filver to the old. Palefline, however, 

 is a poor country, left to its own refources and produce 

 merely. It mufl have been always a poor country, with- 

 out fome extraordinary connection with foreign nations. 

 It never contained either mines of gold or filver, and though, 

 at moft periods of its hiflory, it appears to have been but 

 thinly inhabited, it never of itfelf produced wherewithal 

 to fupport and maintain the few that dwelt in it. 



Mr de Montesquieu t, fpeaking of the wealth of Semi- 

 ramis, imagines that the great riches of the Aflyrian 



empire 



* Exod. xxxviii 39. f Lib. 21. cap. 6. 



