Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/23

SYRIA AND THE PHOENICIAN COAST. countries and races, but as a fact it unites them. As soon as man learnt to trust to "the waste of waters" and to so combine the powers of the sail and rudder that his barque became as docile as a horse or camel, he could fix his eyes upon the sun and the stars and take himself whither he pleased. As the fertilising dust is carried by the breeze to fields far enough from that where it is shaken from the parent stem, so ideas travel much faster, much farther, and much more securely when they are carried over sea by the winds than when they have to encounter all the rubs and toils of travel by land. To establish communications between men who are separated by vast spaces there is no go-between so efficient as a maritime population, a population driven year by year, by love of gain and love of adventure, to extend the ever- widening circle of their explorations. Such a population was at hand exactly when the Egyptians and Mesopotamians required its good offices, their civilizations being ripe for expansion beyond their own borders. Driven by events that we only know by their effects, a people had established them- selves on the Syrian coast, not far from the isthmus that unites Africa to Asia, between the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates and within easy reach of both. In order to reach the frontier of Egypt, at Pelusium, not more than three or four days of a desert in which wells were frequent had to be traversed after quitting the last town in Syria. When they began to risk themselves at sea, the voyage was no less short and easy Even in the days when sailors crept along the coast, beaching their ships every night, they did not take long to arrive at the eastern mouth of the great African river, whence they might mount at their ease as far into the heart of the country as they wished to go. To reach Mesopotamia a somewhat longer journey had to be undertaken. But the middle Euphrates throws out a great elbow westwards, which almost brings it into touch with the frontier of Upper Syria, and those making their way eastwards from the coast had only to follow the easy mountain roads which existed both north and south of the Lebanon, and to cross a well-watered plain, before they came to the valley of the great river. They had then only to abandon themselves to its current to arrive in due time in the heart of Chaldaea, on the quays of that Babylon whence numerous canals would put them in communication with every industrial centre in Lower Mesopotamia.