There was something, then, so excellent in arrangement in these Phœnician ships which seemed to Xenophon so superior to the vessels of his own countrymen; and the sailor-like neatness and systematic order were to him so striking that even to his disciplined and orderly mind they were most remarkable. It requires but little imagination to picture from this scant reference the ship’s company doing everything according to drill. The seaman-like care for the running gear on the part of the ship’s husband ready for any emergency is, indeed, highly suggestive. The importance of the Phœnicians is considerable, not merely for their own sake, but because of their permanent influence on the Greeks. But the latter were rather fighters than explorers as compared with the Phœnicians. At a very early date there was the sea communication between the Mediterranean and the North, and we may date this certainly as far back as the year 2000 B.C., suggests Dr. Nansen, himself an explorer and student of the early voyagers. The only places, excluding China, whence tin-ore was known to be procurable in ancient times, he asserts, were North-West Spain, Cornwall, and probably Brittany. It is significant that in the oldest pyramid-graves of Egypt tin is found, and the inference is that the inhabitants of the Mediterranean from at least this epoch voyaged north to fetch this commodity from Western Europe. And with the tin came also supplies of amber as well. Archæological finds, affirms the same authority, prove that as far back as the Scandinavian Bronze Age, or prior to this, there must have been some sort of communication between the Mediterranean and northern lands. One of the earliest trade routes connecting the Mediterranean and the Baltic was from the Black Sea up the Dneiper, then along its tributary the Bug to the Vistula, and down the latter to the coast. By their sea-voyages to distant lands the Phœnicians contributed for the first time a great deal of geographical knowledge of the world, and in many ways influenced Greek geography. Up till then the learned men who applied themselves to such subjects had but the vaguest idea of the North. But just as in subsequent centuries the Spanish kept their explored regions to themselves and continued most cautious lest other nationalities should learn their sources of wealth, so the Phœnicians did their best to keep their trade routes secret lest their rivals, the Greeks, should step in and enrich themselves. In the absence, therefore, of anything sufficiently definite, there was for a long period a good deal of wild and inaccurate speculation.