So far as can now be ascertained, the joint fleets of Hiram and Solomon sailed periodically from the Ælanitic or Akaba gulf, for the East, somewhere between November and March, when the winds are favourable for a voyage down the Red Sea. Thence, probably, a portion of the ships shaped their course for the south-east shores of Africa, from the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, to Zanzibar and Sofala; while a second portion coasted to the northward till they reached the shores of Beloochistan, Baroach (Barygaza), and even the western coasts of Hindostan. Over-sea voyages from Arabia to India were doubtless of considerably later date, when the character and use of the monsoons had been more or less ascertained. “Every three years once came the ships of Tarshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks;”[133] a length of time which, at first sight, seems scarcely credible, yet is accounted for by the habits of those early mariners. The merchants of those days had no factors as consignees of their produce or home manufactures, with orders to have ready a cargo in return. They were therefore obliged to keep their ships as a floating warehouse until the exported cargo had been sold, and the produce of the country they were to take in exchange was ready for shipment. Indeed Herodotus states, what seems to have been a common custom, that when their stock of corn was exhausted, the mariners landed at some convenient spot, sowed corn, and reaped the harvest, before proceeding with their voyage.[134] [Sidenote: The inland commerce of Solomon.] There is some difficulty, looking at the present desolate and barren state of Palestine and of the districts around it, in realizing the possibility of such vast productiveness as the story of Solomon evidently implies; and the face of the country must have greatly changed in the last two thousand eight hundred years, for, now at least, the land of the Edomites, and a great portion of Arabia from the Persian Gulf to the Euphrates on the one side, and to the Red Sea on the other, is perfectly barren. Yet, that Babylonia was once of extraordinary fertility we know from the statements of Herodotus, and it is possible that much of Palestine, now withering under the bane of Turkish despotism, might revive with better and wiser treatment. Mr. Rich[135] states that Babylonia “is not cultivated to above half the degree of which it is susceptible;” and General Chesney[136] says “that those portions of Mesopotamia which are still cultivated, as the country about Hillah, show that the region has all the fertility ascribed to it by Herodotus.”[137]