to India by the Cape of Good Hope. The consequence of that expedition upon the maritime genius and efforts of all the Grecian states was such, that, in less than fifty years, they were able to furnish twelve hundred ships, of all descriptions, to carry on the war against Troy; and of that number the Athenians alone, according to Homer,* furnished fifty vessels.

With the destruction of Troy expired that ardor of naval enterprize, which had begun to distinguish the rising republics of Greece; an additional proof of its having in great part originated from a foreign source, the immediate impulse of which upon their minds having ceased, their conduct was of course no longer influenced by it. No grand naval exploit of that nation is, for several centuries, recorded on the page of history: their mariners, during this long interval,were either dispersed among the vessels of the Phoenician merchants, or piratically infested that element on which the daring nautical genius of the former engrossed the traffic, and disdained a rival.

The ruin of the elder Tyre, near the commencement of the sixth century before Christ,

* Iliad, lib. ii. v. 94.

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by the Assyrian monarch Nebuchadnezzar, called forth into action the dormant ambition of Athens, to possess the palm of commerce and the sovereignty of the ocean. Their progress, however, in navigation, was necessarily slow, from the infant state of astronomical science among them, since, as yet, they only knew to steer the course of their vessels by the stars in Ursa Major; a most uncertain guide in remote and hazardous voyages, since that constellation very imperfectly points out the pole, and the stars in its extremities are at the distance of above forty degrees from it. It was not till Thales, the inventor, according to the Greeks, of the asterism of the Lesser Bear, had returned from Egypt, that they became acquainted with, and were able to sail by, the unerring light of the pole-star. That philo sopher brought with him the grand postulatum, together with many other splendid attainments in science, from the caverns of the Thebais, about the middle of this century, and proved to Greece what the Cynosure was to navigation; the guiding star of its expanding genius. From that instant her naval glory began to dawn, but it was not till after the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, and the final annihilation of the Tyrian empire by Alexander,

Alexander, that it reached its meridian. The Athenians were not without rivals in the contest for maritime dominion; the indefatigable race of Ægina, and the voluptuous, yet mercantile, sons of Corinth, long combated their claim to that enviable distinction; till, at length, the former being subdued by the Athenian arms directed against them by the immortal Pericles, and the latter having called in the same power to aid them against the Spartan army, which, under the command of Agesilaus, had laid siege to their sumptuous metropolis, the Athenians became triumphant on the ocean; and, closely pursuing the tract of the Phoenician vessels, displayed the banners of Greece on the shores of the Cassiterides and in the Gulph of Cambay.

Before, however, I proceed to state the par ticulars of the flourishing trade carried on by this enterprizing people with those remote regions, it is necessary I should notice two events, in producing which the Greeks were greatly instrumental; events of great importance as to their consequence on the commerce and kingdoms of the east, but principally relative to those of Egypt and Persia, to whose history therefore I must, for a short period, direct the attention of the indulgent reader.

CURSORY

CURSORY REFLECTIONS ON THE LIMITED

NAVAL

CONCERNS OF THE ANCIENT

EGYPTIANS AND PERSIANS.

I HAVE not hitherto, in any particular manner, mentioned the maritime concerns of the ancient Egyptians, nor yet of the ancient Persians, for, in fact, neither of those nations were greatly addicted to nautical adventures. The former were prevented from becoming' so by their abominable superstition, which led them to consider the ocean, probably from some faint traditions relative to the deluge, as the enraged Typhon, the restless enemy of the benign Osiris. I have, however, already observed, that Sesostris, 1600 years before Christ, had endeavoured to conquer this rooted aversion of the Egyptians to naval enterprizes; that he contrived to have a fleet of four hundred ships of war on the Arabian Gulph, and that he instituted among his reluctant subjects a marine class. Their deeply-rootedreligious prejudices were,doubtless, one, but not the only, cause of their aversion to the sea and foreign trade; for, happy in their own genius, and in a most fertile soil,

the

the ancient Egyptians, like the modern inhabitants of Japan, were internally rich in every thing necessary to their happiness and convenience; and, except minerals and some particular gums consumed in religious rites and in embalming the dead, wanted not the luxuries which foreign commerce introduces. Not that they were entirely destitute of that species of commerce, but they suffered other nations, more addicted to nautical concerns, to be their factors and agents. Able as they were, from their situation, to command the whole navigation of the Red Sea, they relinquished the natural right of their country to the more adventurous Tyrian and Idumæan mariners; and were content to receive, through their hands, the Arabian incense that burned in their temples, and the Indian drugs annually swallowed up by the rapacious jaws of the catacombs. For these they bartered the emeralds of the Thebais; the fine glass, fabricated from the ashes of the celebrated plant kali, at the great Diospolis, in which city the manufacture of this article rivalled, if not exceeded, the antiquity of those of Sidon; the natron that grows so abundantly in that country, and even at this day supplies the shops of European druggists; the paper formed from the

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