12 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY

\/ those of the Southern seas. It may be interesting in

this connection to note that the words which are trans-

lated in the English version of the Bible as "ivory,

apes, and peacocks," are not Hebrew but Tamyl words — a circumstance which serves to confirm historic evidence that the commerce of Solomon extended at least as far

i/ as Ceylon. The participation of the Phoenicians in the

trade of Ophir seems to have dated from the period of their friendship with the Jews under Solomon, or about

looo years before Christ, but the trade itself was much older.

Through a considerable portion of their history the Phoenicians appear to have acted as commercial agents for Egypt. It was by the orders of Necho, King of

Egypt, that about the year 612 B.C. Phoenician sailors, playing for this famous king a part analogous to that which Columbus played 2000 years later for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, started from the Red Sea to explore the Southern Ocean, and, according to the tradi-

tion related by Herodotus, proved the fact that Africa was surrounded by water on all sides but the strip of land which bound her to Asia, arriving in the third year from their departure once more in Egypt by way of the Straits of Gibraltar. As they sailed, it is related that they landed on the coasts, sowing the land and waiting for harvests. Thus a tradition of them lingers on the west coast as well as on the east ; and to them it is in some quarters believed that the legend of the first white men in Western

"^ Negroland may be traced. It is the fashion to doubt this

statement of Herodotus with regard to the circumnaviga-

tion of Africa ; but, in the light of many remarkable facts concerning African history which have of late become known, it may be worth while to remember that the achievement spoken of, if it really occurred, would have been almost within the memory of an old man at the time at which Herodotus wrote. Carthage had intercourse across the desert with Negroland, and drew thence its supply of elephants, as well as gold and carbuncles.