The second fact to which we allude is related in the Commentary of Abu Sird, on the Travels of a Mahommedan in India and China, in the ninth century of the Christian era.  The travels and commentary are already given in the first volume of this work; but the importance of the fact will, we trust, plead our excuse for repeating the passage which contains it.

“In our times, discovery has been made of a thing quite new:  nobody imagined that the sea which extends from the Indies to China, had any communication with the sea of Syria, nor could any one take it into his head.  Now behold what has come to pass in our days, according to what we have heard.  In the Sea of Rum, or the Mediterranean, they found the wreck of an Arabian ship which had been shattered by tempest; for all her men perishing, and she being dashed to pieces by the waves, the remains of her were driven by wind and weather into the Sea of Chozars, and from thence to the canal of the Mediterranean sea, and at last were thrown on the Sea of Syria.  This evinces that the sea surrounds all the country of China, and of Sila,—­the uttermost parts of Turkestan, and the country of the Chozars, and then it enters at the strait, till it washes the shore of Syria.  The proof of this is deduced from the built of the ship we are speaking of; for none but the ships of Sarif are so put together, that the planks are not nailed, or bolted, but joined together in an extraordinary manner, as if they were sewn; whereas the planking of all the ships of the Mediterranean Sea, and of the coast of Syria, is nailed and not joined together in the same way.”

When we entered on this digression, we had brought the historical sketch of the discoveries and commerce of the Phoenicians down to the period of the destruction of Old Tyre, or about six hundred years before Christ.  We shall now resume it, and add such particulars on these subjects as relate to the period that intervened between that event and the capture of New Tyre by Alexander the Great.  These are few in number; for though New Tyre exceeded, according to all accounts, the old city in splendour, riches, and commercial prosperity, yet antient authors have not left us any precise accounts of their discoveries, such as can justly be fixed within the period to which we have alluded.  They seem to have advanced farther than they had previously done along the west coast of Africa, and further along the north coast of Spain:  the discovery of the Cassiterides also, and their trade to these islands for tin, (which we have shewn could hardly have taken place so early as is generally supposed,) must also have occurred, either immediately before, or soon after, the building of New Tyre.  It is generally believed, that the Cassiterides were the Scilly Islands, off the coast of Cornwall.  Strabo and Ptolemy indeed place them off the coast of Spain; but Diodorus Siculus and Pliny give them a situation, which, considering the vague and erroneous ideas the