Commerce appears at first to have been entirely confined to the productions of the eastern and middle parts of Asia, which have, from the earliest periods, been sought after with great avidity by the people of other countries.

All that is most grateful to the taste, the eye, or the smell, is found in peculiar excellence in India.  It is not to be wondered at then, if such objects of the desires of men were an abundant source of riches to those nations who had the means of obtaining them.

Egypt and Syria lay immediately in the road for this commerce.  They were rivals, and many contests and vicissitudes were the consequence:  for no commerce has ever created so much envy and jealousy.  None has ever raised those who carried it on so high, or, on forsaking them, left them so low, as that which has been carried on with India.

Though at a very early period Egypt had a share of this lucrative commerce, yet the greatest part was carried on through Syria and Arabia, between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea; that part now called the Levant, where Tyre and Sidon once stood. [end of page #51]

We shall examine briefly the changes of this commerce; the only one almost existing, in early times, or at least which gave rise to nearly all that did exist. {46}

As the common necessaries of life are found in greater or less abundance in every country, and as the population is in some degree regulated by their quantity, they made no objects of trade, except in the cases of famine.  The precious metals, spices, jewels, and aromatics, rare in their production, universally desirable and easily transported, were long the chief objects of commerce; and the changes which this commerce has undergone and produced, amongst those who possessed it, greatly elucidate the subject of this inquiry.

The distance from Babylon to the Persian gulf, down the Euphrates, to where Bussora now stands, was not great, and across the country to Tyre there was little interruption; the Assyrian empire extending to the sea-coast, and its monarchs being too powerful to have any thing to fear.

There was, however, at a very early period, another channel, by which the Tyrians obtained the productions of the East, namely, by sailing up the Red Sea, or Arabian Gulf, and across Arabia Petrea to Rhinocolura. {47}

The Egyptians, at that time, obtained the same sorts of merchandize, by sailing likewise up the Red Sea, and landing at the western extremity; from whence they were distributed through Lower Egypt.

Commerce was carried on in this manner, and was nearly all engrossed by Tyre, when Alexander the Great, bred up under his father, who had been educated at Athens, and travelled through Greece,

—–­ {46} To carry on trade, capital is necessary; that is to say, there must be some means of getting an article before it can be carried away and sold.  Spices, precious stones, and the other produce of the East, cost little or almost nothing amongst those who had more than they could use; and, as they produced an immense profit to merchants, they laid a foundation for those capitals that afterwards were employed in other sorts of business.