Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/407

HARBOURS 385 s; 3. Harbours. No inland Phoenician town is known to history. Of all the cities built by the Syrian merchants the harbour is the vital organ, the part that could not be injured or even threatened without grave damage to the body as a whole. And yet Phoenicia was not, like Greece, a country pre-destinetl by nature to become a nursery for sailors and a school of navigation. The coast of Syria offers none of those thoroughly sheltered roads, or vast natural basins, which so abound on the coasts of Asia Minor and the Hellenic peninsula. From the mouth of the Orontes to the river of Egypt there is no harbour to be for a moment compared to the Piraeus, the Golden Horn, or the Gulf of Smyrna. The few capes are of too slight projection and too straight to do much in the way of providing a quiet anchorage. Few coasts are in fact more inhospitable, but all the early Phoenician mariners required was a shelter to take the wind out of their sails and allow them to be reefed, or a stretch of sand on which, at the worst, they could beach their flat-bottomed craft. Wherever the coast did not rise in precipitous cliffs, creeks and sandy beaches were frequent enough, and in their choice of sites for their earliest settlements the Phoenicians appear to have always pitched upon points which were at once easily defensible and conspicuous from a distance. The islands and promontories upon which they built their houses were so many landmarks. Each had its peculiar physiognomy, and after a stormy night the captain of any ship at sea could tell at a glance whether he had Arad or By bios, Tyre or Sidon, on his bow or quarter. With the passage of time open fishing boats developed into decked ships, whose swelling sides were contrived to hold the precious merchandise which came and went between Phoenicia and the outer world. Basins had then to be provided in which vessels could lie quietly while being laden or discharged. Every accident of the land was made use of for the formation of real harbours ; at some points, to the north of Sidon for instance, reefs which broke the waves as they rolled in upon the land were turned to VOL. i. 30