Such was the extent of the Phoenician land trade, as indicated by the prophet Ezekiel, and such were, so far as is at present known, the commodities interchanged in the course of it.  It is quite possible—­nay, probable—­that the trade extended much further, and certain that it must have included many other articles of commerce besides those which we have mentioned.  The sources of our information on the subject are so few and scanty, and the notices from which we derive our knowledge for the most part so casual, that we may be sure what is preserved is but a most imperfect record of what was—­fragments of wreck recovered from the sea of oblivion.  It may have been a Phoenician caravan route which Herodotus describes as traversed on one occasion by the Nasamonians,[993] which began in North Africa and terminated with the Niger and the city of Timbuctoo; and another, at which he hints as lying between the coast of the Lotus-eaters and Fezzan.[994] Phoenician traders may have accompanied and stimulated the slave hunts of the Garamantians,[995] as Arab traders do those of the Central African nations at the present day.  Again, it is quite possible that the Phoenicians of Memphis designed and organised the caravans which, proceeding from Egyptian Thebes, traversed Africa from east to west along the line of the “Salt Hills,” by way of Ammon, Augila, Fezzan, and the Tuarik country to Mount Atlas.[996] We can scarcely imagine the Egyptians showing so much enterprise.  But these lines of traffic can be ascribed to the Phoenicians only by conjecture, history being silent on the subject.

The sea trade of the Phoenicians was still more extensive than their land traffic.  It is divisible into two branches, their trade with their own colonists, and that with the natives of the various countries to which they penetrated in their voyages.  The colonies sent out from Phoenicia were, except in the single instance of Carthage, trading settlements, planted where some commodity or commodities desired by the mother-country abounded, and were intended to secure to the mother-country the monopoly of such commodity or commodities.  For instance, Cyprus was colonised for the sake of its copper mines and its timber; Cilicia and Lycia for their timber only; Thasos for its gold mines; Salamis and Cythera for the purple trade; Sardinia and Spain for their numerous metals; North Africa for its fertility and for the trade with the interior.  Phoenicia expected to derive, primarily, from each colony the commodity or commodities which had caused the selection of the site.  In return she supplied the colonists with her own manufactured articles; with fabrics in linen, wool, cotton, and perhaps to some extent in silk; with every variety of pottery, from dishes and jugs of the plainest and most simple kind to the most costly and elaborate vases and amphorae; with metal utensils and arms, with gold and silver ornaments, with embossed shields and paterae, with faince and glass, and also