who fettled in the diftricts where the ark refted, but all remembrance of which was in fucceeding ages loft by thofe who emigrated to regions very remote from that favoured portion of Afia. If this had not been the cafe, how came it to pass, that, for many centuries afterward, the light of rifing science, and all the principles as well as practice of the arts, generally deemed useful, flowed thence, as from a common centre, to illuminate distant nations, funk in the groffeft ignorance and barbarity?

1

Not lefs decifive is the voice of Pagan antiquity, in referring to that enterprizing race the invention of aftronomy, and particularly of the conftellation which we denominate the Leffer Bear, on the point of whofe tail on the fphere is fixed the pole-ftar, that star, whose brilliant and steady light, emaning from the centre of the arctic circle, ferved and ftill does ferve as an unerring guide to those whom conqueft or commerce induce to traverse the pathlefs ocean. The Greeks, indeed, invading the rights of an older race, have attributed to Thales the honour of firft claffing together the ftars in this afterifin; but its prior name of PHONICE, frequently beftowed upon it even by the Greeks themfelves,

VOL. VI.

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felves, is a fufficient refutation of this unjust claim.

To the particular cultivation of thefe fciences and of that commerce which they extended in time to the remoteft regions of the earth, the Phoenicians were irefiftibly impelled by their fituation on a narrow flip of land ftretching along the fhore of the Mediterranean Sea between the 34th and 36th degree of north latitude. Inhabiting a barren and ungrateful foil, they were obliged, by unwearied industry to correct the deficiencies. of nature, and by extensive commercial enterprizes to make the abundant wealth of distant nations and more fertile regions their own. They foon began to fend forth colonies to all the furrounding nations that would receive them; they eftablifhed an intercourfe with all the islands of the Mediterranean Sea, and with the principal maritime cities of Perfia, India, and Egypt. The ports of the Arabian Gulph were crowded with their veffels; they were the general factors of that Oriental world, in the very centre of which they refided, and all trade was carried on in Phoenician veffels: in a word they were the BRITONS OF REMOTE ANTIQUITY.

For

For the reafons and on the grounds already ftated to the reader in the preceding chapter, I have fuppofed that the earliest post-diluvian navigators of the ocean had the knowledge and ufe of the magnetic needle imparted to them by the father of the renovated world, or one of the facred OGDOAS preferved in the ark, which was piloted through the raging billows by means of that wonderful guide, under the guardianship of Divine Providence. I fee no reason to retract that opinion, for it is fcarcely credible, that without it the first colonies from Afia could ever have reached in fafety the distant and dangerous fhore of Britain. By the fame channel it probably came to the Phoenicians, who might have the art to keep it fecret from the Greeks, as the did, for a long period, the rich fource whence they derived that immense quantity of Tin with which they fupplied the Afiatic markets. Leaving, however, uncertain though not improbable conjecture, let us advert to what genuine hiftory records of the gradual progrefs of the Phoenician mariners in queft of that commodity towards the western limits of Europe. The reader will please to obferve, that I am not now tracing the footsteps of the firft fettlers to Britain, but of that adventurous

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race

race of merchants who firft imported to her fhores the rich productions of Afia and Africa, when population was increased, and kingdoms, powerful though barbarous, were formed amidft her woody receffes.

To the islands fcattered over the Mediterranean, and the neighbouring ports of the Afiatic continent, were probable confined the firft rude efforts of Phoenician navigation. By degrees they grew bolder, and coafting weftward along the fhore of the Mediterranean, but feldom daring to lofe fight of it, they difcovered the fouthern point of Spain. That fouthern point was the mountain Calpe, or modern rock of Gibraltar, fituated on the Fretum Herculeum, or Straits of Hercules, and the fpot on which that hero is afferted to have erected the famous columns which bear his name; or rather, to quit mythology, the vaft rock of Calpe itfelf is one of those columns, and the mountain Abyla, on the oppofite coaft of Africa, is the other. They were thought to be the extreme boundary of his voyage weftward, and the ftory of his opening thefe celebrated ftraits means only that he firft explored them, and difcovered the paffage through them into the Atlantic Ocean. Calpe was many centuries after

wards

wards vifited by the Moors, and called Gebeltaric; whence, according to D'Anville, is corruptly formed its modern name of Gibraltar. At the foot of the mountain they built a city, which they alfo called Calpe, mentioned by Strabo as a celebrated city in his time. Other ancient geographers denominate this city Cartea, or Melcarteia and Heraclea, deriving the former name from Melicartus, the latter from Hercules, the wellknown appellatives of its fuppofed founder.* It was fome time before the Phoenician navigators had courage to pafs through thefe dangerous ftraits, and explore the great and untried ocean beyond it. Their eager defire, however, to add the wealth of Europe to that of Afia, getting the better of their fears, induced them, at length, to undertake the perilous voyage, and they fettled their firft colony beyond the ftraits, at the ifle of Gadir, or Gades, on the western coast of Andalufia, which is the modern Cadiz.† Here they built a city very celebrated in antiquity, and erected a magnificent temple to Hercules, which was vifited by Apollonius Tyanæus, and is de

* See Bochart's Canaan, p. 682.

+ Strabonis Geograph. lib. iii. p. 169, ubi fupra.

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fcribed