We have been thus circumstantial in our description of Babylon, for obvious reasons. First--that it was the first local situation where, since the deluge, men had associated for civil purposes; and secondly--because it was the original station where the astronomical science was cultivated. From Chaldea, Astronomy travelled to Egypt, where she was studied for many ages; she also went to Phœnicia, where she was regarded with equal attention. But the peculiar occasion which the Phœnician people had to improve their acquaintance with this science, will appear, upon reflecting that these people occupied a narrow and barren tract of land between the Mediterranean and Arabian seas; therefore, they found it essentially necessary to improve their situation by those means which Divine Providence had apparently marked out for them to resort unto; we accordingly find them applying to mercantile industry; as a commercial people, in this character, they were the ready medium of communication between every part of the then known world. In consequence, they had factories or mercantile stations up the Mediterranean; but particularly on its European side, on the shores of the Atlantic, and even in the British sea: we recognise their occupying Marseilles, and others, on the coast of France; Cadiz, on that of Spain; the Lizard Point, and other places, in Cornwall, where they traded for tin in the British Isles. In brief, their commercial spirit carried them to every part of the globe: by the by, admitting that rational belief be allowed to Plato and Solon, we shall find that they had, in the first ages, explored the Atlantic Ocean, and even discovered America. A great variety of authorities may be adduced to prove the assertion--that the Phœnicians made three descents on the American coast; and others, who say that the inhabitants discovered there by the Spaniards, gave the same names to the plants as had been assigned them in Asia; that their religious rites were similar, and general customs and manners the same,--we refer to Joseph Da Costa’s “History of the Indies,” published in 1694. This author was an eye-witness, and wrote from actual observation. The Phœnicians, in the exercise of their mercantile functions, had the most obvious necessity to cultivate the sideral science. We find that they accordingly did so, and made various improvements and very important discoveries by their exercise. From the northern hemisphere being more known to them than it was to the Chaldeans, they discovered that splendid and beautiful asterism, _Cynosuræ_, or the polar-star,--an asterism of the most singular service, before the properties of the magnet were discovered, and which star was sometimes called, from them, Phœnice.