8 AN HISTORICAL DISQUISITION

SECT.

I.

the conveyance of goods to it by land carriage sotedious and expensive, that it became necessaryfpr them to take possession of Rhinocolura, thenearest port in the Mediterranean to the ArabianGulf. Thither all the commodities brought fromIndia, were conveyed over land by a route muchshorter, and more practicable than that by whichthe productions of the Last were carried at a sub-sequent period from the opposite shore of the Ara-bian Gulf to the Nile 8 . At Rhinocolura, theywere relhipped, and transported by an easy navi-gation to Tyre, and distributed through the world.This as it is the earliest route of communicationwith India, of which we have any authentic de-scription, had so many advantages over any everknown before the modern discovery of a newcourse of navigation to the East, that the Pheni-cians could supply other nations with the productionsof India in greater abundance, and at a cheaperrate, than any people of antiquity. To this circum-stance, which, for a considerable time, secured tothem a monopoly of that trade, was owing, notonly the extraordinary wealth of individuals, whichrendered the “merchants of Tyre, Princes, and“■her traffickers the Honorable of the Earth 9 ;”but the extensive power of the state itself, whichfirst taught mankind to conceive what vast resourcesa commercial people possess, and what great exer-tions they are capable of making l °.

* Dlod. Sic. lib. i. p. 70. Strab. lib. xvi. p. ii2g. A>

9 Isaiah, xxiii. 8- See NOTE II.