The whole of this vast wealth would seem, by the remarks of Diodorus, to have been derived, not from war and plunder, but by the prosecution throughout many ages of peaceful commerce and unwearied industry. “Before merchants,” observes Arrian, “sailed from India to Egypt, and from Egypt to India, Arabia Felix was the staple both for Egyptian and Indian goods, much as Alexandria is now for the commodities of Egypt and foreign merchandise;” a testimony fully borne out by abundant statements in Holy Scripture. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel all speak in glowing terms of the great wealth of Arabia Felix. Nowhere, too, were the civilizing effects of commerce more noticeable than in Arabia Felix. Although Dr. Vincent remarks that “the importance of this commerce, as it appears in the “Periplus,” is manifestly far inferior to the representation of it in Agatharchides,” he adds, “still it is evident that the manners of the people in this quarter of Arabia were civilized, that the government was consistent, and that the merchant was protected. This character, as we learn from Niebuhr, Yemen still maintains, in preference to the Hijar and the whole interior of the peninsula. The same security is marked as strongly by the “Periplus” in Hadramaut; and the whole coast on the ocean being commercial, _the interests of commerce have subdued the natural ferocity of the inhabitants_.”[243] It would appear that, before the settlements at Moosa and Okelis, the ships from Persia, Caramania, and the Indus came no farther than the coast just outside the straits, near the modern Aden, and that here the fleets of Egypt met them and exchanged their articles of commerce. Many writers, too, on this subject, have maintained that the fleet of Solomon, though fitted out with the view of going as far as Sofala, did not proceed beyond the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and that they there exchanged the produce of the West for that of India, Yemen, and Africa. We, however, adhere to the opinion already expressed, that at least a portion of Solomon’s fleet visited both the Indus and the eastern coast of Africa. It is not, in itself, likely that seamen so enterprising and adventurous as the Phœnicians, would have failed in accomplishing any voyage wherein the ships of other nations had been successful; nor, viewing the profits the Arabians derived from their intercourse with the East, can it be supposed that the merchants and shipowners of Phœnicia would have cut short their voyages at the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, knowing too, as they could not fail to have known, many commercial reports about a vast country to the east abounding in riches, which the Arabians had reached by sea. It seems also more than probable that they had, at the same time, learnt something of the character of the winds which favoured such voyages, and their reasoning must have been, “What the inhabitants of the sea coasts of Arabia and Africa can perform by vessels in every way inferior to those of