The history of maritime discovery begins among the Phœnicians. The civilization of Egypt, as self-centred as that of China, accepted only the commerce that was brought to its gates; but the men of Sidon and Tyre, with their keen devotion to material interests, their almost modern ingenuity, had early appropriated the carrying trade of the east and the west. As they looked adventurously seaward from their narrow domain, the dim outline of Cyprus beckoned them down a long lane of island stations to the rich shores of Spain. Even their religion betrayed their bent: El and Cronos, their oldest deities, were wanderers, and vanished in the west; on their traces Melkarth led a motley swarm of colonists to the Atlantic. These legends, filtering through Cyprus, Crete, or Rhodes, or borne by rash adventurers from distant Gades, appeared anew in Grecian mythology, the deeds of Melkarth mingling with the labors of Hercules. We do not know when the Phœnicians first reached the Atlantic, nor what were the limits of their ocean voyages. Gades, the present Cadiz, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar, was founded a few years before 1100 B.C., but not, it is probable, without previous knowledge of the commercial importance of the location. There were numerous other settlements along the adjacent coast, and the gold, silver, and tin of these distant regions grew familiar in the markets of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India. The trade with Tartessus, the El Dorado of antiquity, gave the Phœnician merchant vessels a name among the Jews, as well in the tenth century, when Solomon shared the adventures of Hiram, as in the sixth, when Ezekiel depicted the glories of Tyrian commerce. The Phœnician seamanship was wide-famed; their vessels were unmatched in speed,[306] and their furniture and discipline excited the outspoken admiration of Xenophon. Beside the large Tarshish ships, they possessed light merchant vessels and ships of war, provided with both sails and oars, and these, somewhat akin to steamships in their independence of wind, were well adapted for exploration. Thus urged and thus provided, it is improbable that the Phœnicians shunned the great ocean. The evidence is still strong in favor of their direct trade with Britain for tin, despite what has been urged as to tin mines in Spain and the prehistoric existence of the trade by land across Gaul.[307] * * * * *