We have reached now the limits of Phoenician colonisation towards the West.  While their trade was carried, especially from Gades, into Luisitania and Gallaecia on the one hand, and into North-western Africa on the other, reaching onward past these districts to Gaul and Britain, to the Senegal and Gambia, possibly to the Baltic and the Fortunate Islands, the range of their settlements was more circumscribed.  As, towards the north-east, though their trade embraced the regions of Colchis and Thrace, of the Tauric Chersonese, and Southern Scythia, their settlements were limited to the AEgean and perhaps the Propontis, so westward they seem to have contented themselves with occupying a few points of vantage on the Spanish and West African coasts, at no great distance from the Straits, and from these stations to have sent out their commercial navies to sweep the seas and gather in the products of the lands which lay at a greater distance.  The actual extent of their trade will be considered in a later chapter.  We have been here concerned only with their permanent settlements or colonies.  These, it has been seen, extended from the Syrian coast to Cyprus, Cilicia, Rhodes, Crete, the islands and shores of the AEgean and Propontis, the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia, and North Africa, the Balearic Islands, Southern Spain, and North-western Africa as far south as Cape Non.  The colonisation was not so continuous as the Greek, nor was it so extensive in one direction,[5183] but on the whole it was wider, and it was far bolder and more adventurous.  The Greeks, as a general rule, made their advances by slow degrees, stealing on from point to point, and having always friendly cities near at hand, like an army that rests on its supports.  The Phoenicians left long intervals of space between one settlement and another, boldly planted them on barbarous shores, where they had nothing to rely on but themselves, and carried them into regions where the natives were in a state of almost savagery.  The commercial motive was predominant with them, and gave them the courage to plunge into wild seas and venture themselves among even wilder men.  With the Greeks the motive was generally political, and a safe home was sought, where social and civil life might have free scope for quiet development.

CHAPTER VI—­ARCHITECTURE

Origin of the architecture in rock dwellings—­Second style, a combination of the native rock with the ordinary wall—­ Later on, the use of the native rock, discarded—­Employment of huge blocks of stone in the early walls—­Absence of cement—­Bevelling—­Occurrence of Cyclopian walls—­Several architectural members comprised in one block—­Phoenician shrines—­The Maabed and other shrines at Amrith—­Phoenician temples—­Temple of Paphos—­Adjuncts to temples—­Museum of Golgi—­Treasure chambers of Curium—­Walls of Phoenician towns—­Phoenician tombs—­Excavated chambers—­Chambers built of masonry—­Groups