-430 T-R AVE! S TO DISC CTV EH 



Solomon vifited Eloth and Ezion-gaber* in perfon, and for- 

 tified them. He collected a number of pilots, fhipwrights, 

 and mariners, difperfed.by his father's conqueft of Edom, 

 moil of whom had taken refuge in Tyre and Sidon, the 

 commercial Hates in the Mediterranean. Hiram fupplied 

 him with faiiors in abundance ; but the fa'ilors fo furnifhed 

 from Tyre were not capable of performing the fervice 

 which Solomon required, without the direction of pilots and 

 mariners ufed to the navigation of the Arabian Gulf and 

 Indian Ocean. Such were thofe mariners who formerly li- 

 ved in Edom, whom Solomon had now collected in Eloth 

 and Ezion-gaber. 



This 1 aft-mentioned navigation was very different in all 

 rcfpects from that of the Mediterranean, which, in reipect 

 to the former, might be compared to a pond, every fide be- 

 ing confined with fhores little diftant the one from the o- 

 ther ; even that fmall extent of fea was fo full of iflands, 

 that there was much greater art required in the pilot to a- 

 void land than to reach it. It was, befides, fubject to vari- 

 able winds, being to the northward of 30 of latitude, the 

 limits to which Providence hath confined thofe winds all o- 

 ver the globe ; whereas the navigation of the Indian Ocean 

 was governed by laws more convenient and regular, though 

 altogether different from thofe that obtained in the Medi- 

 terranean. Before I proceed, it will be necelTary to explain 

 this phenomenon. 



It is known to all thofe who are ever fo little verfant in 

 the hiftory of Egypt, that the wind frcm the north prevails 



in 



* 2 Chron. chap. viii. ver I 7. 



