With the exception of Egypt, Ionia, Cyprus, Hellas, and Spain, the Phoenician intercourse with these places must have been carried on wholly by land. Even with Egypt, wherewith the communication by sea was so facile, there seems to have been also from a very early date a land commerce. The land commerce was in every case carried on by caravans. Western Asia has never yet been in so peaceful and orderly condition as to dispense prudent traders from the necessity of joining together in large bodies, well provisioned and well armed, when they are about to move valuable goods any considerable distance. There have always been robber-tribes in the mountain tracts, and thievish Arabs upon the plains, ready to pounce on the insufficiently protected traveller, and to despoil him of all his belongings. Hence the necessity of the caravan traffic. As early as the time of Joseph--probably about B.C. 1600--we find a _company_ of the Midianites on their way from Gilead, with their camels bearing spicery, and balm, and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt.[941] Elsewhere we hear of the “travelling _companies_ of the Dedanim,”[942] of the men of Sheba bringing their gold and frankincense;[943] of a multitude of camels coming up to Palestine with wood from Kedar and Nebaioth.[944] Heeren is entirely justified in his conclusion that the land trade of the Phoenicians was conducted by “large companies or caravans, since it could only have been carried on in this way.”[945] The nearest neighbours of the Phoenicians on the land side were the Jews and Israelites, the Syrians of Damascus, and the people of Northern Syria, or the Orontes valley and the tract east of it. From the Jews and Israelites the Phoenicians seem to have derived at all times almost the whole of the grain which they were forced to import for their sustenance. In the time of David and Solomon it was chiefly for wheat and barley that they exchanged the commodities which they exported,[946] in that of Ezekiel it was primarily for “wheat of Minnith;”[947] and a similar trade is noted on the return of the Jews from the captivity,[948] and in the first century of our era.[949] But besides grain they also imported from Palestine at some periods wine, oil, honey, balm, and oak timber.[950] Western Palestine was notoriously a land not only of corn, but also of wine, of olive oil, and of honey, and could readily impart of its superfluity to its neighbour in time of need. The oaks of Bashan are very abundant, and seem to have been preferred by the Phoenicians to their own oaks as the material of oars.[951] Balm, or basalm, was a product of the land of Gilead,[952] and also of the lower Jordan valley, where it was of superior quality.[953]