In a region so fortunately situated for commerce, mercantile activity kept pace with agricultural development. The merchants of Saba enjoyed a reputation for shrewdness, ability, wealth, and enterprise not inferior to that of the Phœnicians themselves. They engaged in transactions involving immense pecuniary investments. They despatched great fleets to China. Their caravans traversed the Syrian and African deserts. They exported to Persia annually a thousand talents weight of frankincense. Not only did they purchase directly the commodities in which they dealt, but they also bought and sold extensively on commission. Their warehouses were filled with the rich products of a score of climes; silver vessels; ingots of copper, tin, iron, and lead; honey and wax; silks, ivory, ebony, coral, agates; civet, musk, myrrh, camphor, and other aromatics, some of which were worth many times their weight in gold. Such was their prodigal luxury that only sandal-wood and cinnamon were used as fuel in the preparation of their food. The vegetable kingdom contributed no insignificant share to the commercial wealth of Southern Arabia. Coffee, indigenous to the Peninsula, was exported as a luxury to the provinces of Asia. In that dry climate, where flourished every known variety of cereals, grain could be stored without injury for thirty years. The cotton-plant, the sugar-cane, the cocoa-palm, yielded enormous revenues to those who engaged in their culture. The balsam of Mecca, the gum Arabic, the sap of the _Acacia Vera_, and the famed frankincense were also important articles of export. The country was reputed to be rich in minerals; inexhaustible deposits of salt existed in Saba; gold was found in the mountains; but Arabia produced no iron, which Strabo says in his time was equal in value to the precious metals. The pearl fisheries of the coast, opposite to the Isles of Bahrein, were unrivalled for the beauty and value of their products.