the stars, these bold mariners penetrated to the shores of Scythia in one direction; to Britain, if not even to the Baltic, in another; in a third to the Fortunate Islands; while, in a fourth, they traversed the entire length of the Red Sea, and entering upon the Southern Ocean, succeeded in doubling the Cape of Storms two thousand years before Vasco di Gama, and in effecting the circumnavigation of Africa.[317] And, wild as the seas were with which they had to deal, they had to deal with yet wilder men.  Except in Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, and perhaps Italy, they came in contact everywhere with savage races; they had to enter into close relations with men treacherous, bloodthirsty, covetous—­men who were almost always thieves, who were frequently cannibals, sometimes wreckers—­who regarded foreigners as a cheap and very delicious kind of food.  The pioneers of civilisation, always and everywhere, incur dangers from which ordinary mortals would shrink with dismay; but the earliest pioneers, the first introducers of the elements of culture among barbarians who had never heard of it, must have encountered far greater peril than others from their ignorance of the ways of savage man, and a want of those tremendous weapons of attack and defence with which modern explorers take care to provide themselves.  Until the invention of gunpowder, the arms of civilised men—­swords, and spears, and javelins, and the like—­were scarcely a match for the cunningly devised weapons—­boomerangs, and blow-pipes, and poisoned arrows, and lassoes[318]—­of the savage.

The adaptability and pliability of the Phoenicians was especially shown in their power of obtaining the favourable regard of almost all the peoples and nations with which they came into contact, whether civilised or uncivilised.  It is most remarkable that the Egyptians, intolerant as they usually were of strangers, should have allowed the Phoenicians to settle in their southern capital, Memphis, and to build a temple and inhabit a quarter there.[319] It is also curious and interesting that the Phoenicians should have been able to ingratiate themselves with another most exclusive and self-sufficing people, viz. the Jews.  Hiram’s friendly dealings with David and Solomon are well known; but the continued alliance between the Phoenicians and the Israelites has attracted less attention.  Solomon took wives from Phoenicia;[320] Ahab married the daughter of Ithobalus, king of Sidon;[321] Phoenicia furnished timber for the second Temple;[322] Isaiah wound up his prophecy against Tyre with a consolation;[323] our Lord found faith in the Syro-Phoenician woman;[324] in the days of Herod Agrippa, Tyre and Sidon still desired peace with Judaea, “because their country was nourished by the king’s country."[325] And similarly Tyre had friendly relations with Syria and Greece, with Mesopotamia and Assyria, with Babylonia and Chaldaea.  At the same time she could bend herself to meet the wants and gain the confidence