But, in addition to all this indirect evidence, we are able to point to actual Greek vessels made of earthenware, fashioned in the shape of a tortoise. In the second Vase Room of the British Museum (case 48 and 49) there are two terra cotta vases from the island of Melos, wrought in the shape of this creature, and with these before us it is hardly possible to regard as other than wooden bowls carved in the shape of the same animal _the wooden tortoises_ with which the Thessalian women pounded to death Lais the famous courtezan, in the temple of Aphrodite, after she had taken up her residence in their country[400]. We can parallel this development of artificial vessels of wood and earthenware from the use of the actual shell in modern times. Lady Brassey saw in the Museum at Honolulu, amongst the ancient native weapons and swords, “tortoise-shell cups and spoons, calabashes and bowls[401].” Now in the Cambridge Ethnological Museum there is a very fine wooden bowl from the South Seas, carved in the shape of a tortoise, and also earthenware vessels in the shape of tortoises from Fiji, which shows that the islanders of the Pacific not only used the real shells for vessels, but likewise imitated them in wood[402]. On an earlier page I quoted the statement of Ephorus that the Aeginetans took to commerce on account of the barrenness of their island. But they must have had something to give in exchange to other people before they could have developed a carrying trade, and as the island had been the resort of merchants from very early days, it must have had something to attract strangers as well as its position. Let us take the case of an island with barren soil in modern days, and see what it has to export. Thus Dhalac Island in the Red Sea is frequented by the Banyan merchants for the sake of its pearls, and at Massowah tortoise-shell forms an important article of commerce. Just as the Banyans come to Dhalac[403], so the Phoenicians probably came to Aegina, searching for the murex (purple fish) and tortoise. No doubt tortoise-shell must have been the chief article of export from Tortoise Island, described by Strabo (773), as situated in the Arabian Gulf (Red Sea).