# Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile/Volume 1/Book 2/Chapter 4

CHAP. IV.
Some Account of the Trade Winds and Monsoons — Application of this to the Voyage to Ophir and Tarshish.
It is a matter of real affliction, which shews the vanity of all human attainments, that the preceding pages have been employed in describing, and, as it were, drawing from oblivion, the history of those very nations that first conveyed to the world, not the elements of literature only, but all sorts of learning, arts, and sciences in their full detail and perfection. We see that these had taken deep root, and were not easily extirpated. The first great and fatal blow they received was from the destruction of Thebes, and its monarchy, by the first invasion of the Shepherds under Salatis, which shook them to the very foundation. The next was in the conquest of the Thebaid under Sabaco and his Shepherds. The third was when the empire of Lower Egypt (I do not think of the Thebaid) was transferred to Memphis, and that city taken, as writers say, by the Shepherds of Abaris only, or of the Delta, though it is scarcely probable, that, in so favourite a cause as the destruction of cities, the whole Shepherds did not lend their assistance.
​ These were the calamities, we may suppose, under which the arts in Egypt fell; for, as to the foreign conquests of Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonians, they affected cities and the persons of individuals only. They were temporary, never intended to have lasting consequences; their beginning and end were prophesied at the same time. That of the Assyrians was a plundering expedition only, as we are told by scripture itself, intended to last but forty years *, half the life of man, given, for a particular purpose, for the indemnification of the king Nebuchadnezzar, for the hardships he sustained at the siege of Tyre, where the obstinacy of the inhabitants, in destroying their wealth, deprived the conqueror of his expected booty. The Babylonians were a people the most polished after the Egyptians. Egypt under them suffered by rapacity, but not by ignorance, as it did in all the conquests of the Shepherds.
After Thebes was destroyed by the first Shepherds, commerce, and it is probable the arts with it, fled for a time from Egypt, and centered in Edom, a city and territory, tho' we know little of its history, at that period the richest in the world. David, in the very neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon, calls Edom the strong city; "Who will bring me into the strong city?Who will lead me into Edom †?" David, from an old quarrel, and probably from the recent instigations of the Tyrians his friends, invaded Edom ‡, destroyed the city, and dispersed the people. He was the great military power then upon the continent; Tyre and Edom were rivals; and his conquest of that last ​ great and trading state, which he united to his empire; would yet have lost him the trade he sought to cultivate, by the very means he used to obtain it, had not Tyre been in a capacity to succeed to Edom, and to collect its mariners and artificers, scattered abroad by the conquest.
David took possession of two ports, Eloth and Ezion-gaber *, from which he carried on the trade to Ophir and Tarshish, to a very great extent, to the day of his death. We are struck with astonishment when we reflect upon the sum that Prince received in so short a time from these mines of Ophir. For what is said to be given by King David † and his Princes for the building of the Temple of Jerusalem, exceeds in value eight hundred millions of our money, if the talent there spoken of is a Hebrew talent ‡ and not a weight of the same denomination, the value of which was less, and peculiarly reserved for and used in the traffic of thefe precious metals, gold and silver. It was, probably, an African or Indian weight, proper to the same mines, whence was gotten the gold appropriated to fine commodities only, as is the case with our ounce Troy different from the Averdupoise.
Solomon, who succeeded David in his kingdom, was his successor likewise in the friendship of Hiram king of Tyre. ​ Solomon visited Eloth and Ezion-gaber * in person, and fortified them. He collected a number of pilots, shipwrights, and mariners, dispersed by his father's conquest of Edom, most of whom had taken refuge in Tyre and Sidon, the commercial states in the Mediterranean. Hiram supplied him with sailors in abundance; but the sailors so furnished from Tyre were not capable of performing the service which Solomon required, without the direction of pilots and mariners used to the navigation of the Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean. Such were those mariners who formerly lived in Edom, whom Solomon had now collected in Eloth and Ezion-gaber.
This last-mentioned navigation was very different in all respects from that of the Mediterranean, which, in respect to the former, might be compared to a pond, every side being confined with shores little distant the one from the other; even that small extent of sea was so full of islands, that there was much greater art required in the pilot to avoid land than to reach it. It was, besides, subject to variable winds, being to the northward of 30° of latitude, the limits to which Providence hath confined those winds all over the globe; whereas the navigation of the Indian Ocean was governed by laws more convenient and regular, though altogether different from those that obtained in the Mediterranean. Before I proceed, it will be necessary to explain this phænomenon.
It is known to all those who are ever so little versant in the history of Egypt, that the wind from the north prevails ​ in that valley all the summer months, and is called the Etesian winds; it sweeps the valley from north to south, that being the direction of Egypt, and of the Nile, which runs through the midst of it. The two chains of mountains, which confine Egypt on the east and on the west, constrain the wind to take this precise direction.
It is natural to suppose the same would be the case in the Arabian Gulf, had that narrow sea been in a direction parallel to the land of Egypt, or due north and south. The Arabian Gulf, however, or what we call the Red Sea, lies from nearly north-west to south-east, from Suez to Mocha. It then turns nearly east and west till it joins the Indian Ocean at the Straits of Babelmandeb, as we have already said, and may be further seen by consulting the map. Now, the Etesian winds, which are due north in Egypt, here take the direction of the Gulf, and blow in that direction steadily all the season, while it continues north in the valley of Egypt; that is, from April to October the wind blows north-west up the Arabian Gulf towards the Straits; and, from November till March, directly contrary, down the Arabian Gulf, from the Straits of Babelmandeb to Suez and the Isthmus.
These winds are by some corruptly called the trade winds; but this name given to them is a very erroneous one, and apt to confound narratives, and make them unintelligible. A trade-wind is a wind which, all the year through, blows, and has ever blown, from the same point of the horizon; such is the south-west, south of the Line, in the Indian and Pacific Ocean. On the contrary, these winds, of which we have now spoken, are called monsoons; each year they blow ​ six months from the northward, and the other six months from the southward, in the Arabian Gulf: While in the Indian Ocean, without the Straits of Babelmandeb, they blow just the contrary at the same seasons; that is, in summer from the southward, and in winter from the northward, subject to a small inflexion to the east and to the west.
The reader will observe, then, that, a vessel sailing from Suez or the Elanitic Gulf, in any of the summer months, will find a steady wind at north-west, which will carry it in the direction of the Gulf to Mocha. At Mocha, the coast is east and west to the Straits of Babelmandeb, so that the vessel from Mocha will have variable winds for a short space, but mostly westerly, and these will carry her on to the Straits. She is then done with the monsoon in the Gulf, which was from the north, and, being in the Indian Ocean, is taken up by the monsoon which blows in the summer months there, and is directly contrary to what obtains in the Gulf. This is a south-wester, which carries the vessel with a flowing sail to any part in India, without delay or impediment.
The same happens upon her return home. She sails in the winter months by the monsoon proper to that sea, that is, with a north-east, which carries her through the Straits of Babelmandeb. She finds, within the Gulf, a wind at south-east, directly contrary to what was in the ocean; but then her course is contrary likewise, so that a south-easter, answering to the direction of the Gulf, carries her directly to Suez, or the Elanitic Gulf, to whichever way she proposes going. Hitherto all is plain, simple, and easy to be ​ understood; and this was the reason why, in the earliest ages, the India trade was carried on without difficulty.
Many doubts, however, have arisen about a port called Ophir, whence the immense quantities of gold and silver came, which were necessary at this time, when provision was making for building the Temple of Jerusalem. In what part of the world this Ophir was has not been yet agreed. Connected with this voyage, too, was one to Tarshish, which suffers the same difficulties; one and the same fleet performed them both in the same season.
In order to come to a certainty where this Ophir was, it will be necessary to examine what scripture says of it, and to keep precisely to every thing like description which we can find there, without indulging our fancy farther. First, then, the trade to Ophir was carried on from the Elanitic Gulf through the Indian Ocean. Secondly, The returns were gold, silver, and ivory, but especially silver *. Thirdly, the time of the going and coming of the fleet was precisely three years †, at no period more nor less.
Now, if Solomon's fleet sailed from the Elanitic Gulf to the Indian Ocean, this voyage of necessity must have been made by monsoons, for no other winds reign in that ocean. And, what certainly shews this was the case, is the precise term of three years, in which the fleet went and came between Ophir and Ezion-gaber. For it is plain, so as to supersede the necessity of proof or argument, that, had this ​ voyage been made with variable winds, no limited term of years ever could have been observed in its going and returning. The fleet might have returned from Ophir in two years, in three, four, or five years; but, with variable winds, the return precisely in three years was not possible, whatever part of the globe Ophir might be situated in.
Neither Spain nor Peru could be Ophir; part of these voyages must have been made by variable winds, and the return consequently uncertain. The island of Ceylon, in the East Indies, could not be Ophir; the voyage thither is indeed made by monsoons, but we have shewed that a year is all that can be spent in a voyage to the East Indies; besides, Ceylon has neither gold nor silver, though it has ivory. St. Domingo has neither gold, nor silver, nor ivory. When the Tyrians discovered Spain, they found a profusion of silver in huge masses, but this they brought to Tyre by the Mediterranean, and then sent it to the Red Sea over land to answer the returns from India. Tarshish, too, is not found to be a port in any of these voyages, so that part of the description fails, nor were there ever elephants bred in Spain.
These mines of Ophir were probably what furnished the East with gold in the earliest times; great traces of excavation must, therefore, have appeared; yet in none of the places just mentioned are there great remains of any mines that have been wrought. The ancient traces of silver-mines in Spain are not to be found, and there never were any of gold. John Dos Santos *, a Dominican friar, says, that on ​ the coast of Africa, in the kingdom of Sofala, the mainland opposite to Madagascar, there are mines of gold and silver, than which none can be more abundant, especially in silver. They bear the traces of having been wrought from the earliest ages. They were actually open and working when the Portuguese conquered that part of the peninsula, and were probably given up since the discovery of the new world, rather from political than any other reasons.
John Dos Santos says, that he landed at Sofala in the year 1586; that he sailed up the great river Cuama as far as Tetè, where, always desirous to be in the neighbourhood of gold, his Order had placed their convent. Thence he penetrated for above two hundred leagues into the country, and saw the gold mines then working, at a mountain called Afura *. At a considerable distance from these are the silver mines of Chicoua; at both places there is great appearance of ancient excavations; and at both places the houses of the kings are built with mud and straw, whilst there are large remains of massy buildings of stone and lime.
It is a tradition which generally obtains in that country, that these works belonged to the Queen of Saba, and were built at the time, and for the purpose of the trade on the Red Sea: this tradition is common to all the Cafrs in that country. Eupolemus, an ancient author quoted by Eusebius †, speaking of David, says, that he built ships at Eloth, a city in Arabia, and thence sent miners, or, as he ​ calls them, metal-men, to Orphi, or Ophir, an island in the Red Sea. Now, by the Red Sea, he understands the Indian Ocean *; and by Orphi, he probably meant the island of Madagascar; or Orphi (or Ophir) might have been the name of the Continent, instead of Sofala, that is, Sofala where the mines are might have been the main-land of Orphi.
The kings of the isles are often mentioned in this voyage; Socotra, Madagascar, the Commorras, and many other small islands thereabout, are probably those the scripture calls the Isles. All, then, at last reduces itself to the finding a place, either Sofala, or any other place adjoining to it, which avowedly can furnish gold, silver, and ivory in quantity, has large tokens of ancient excavations, and is at the same time under such restrictions from monsoons, that three years are absolutely necessary to perform the voyage, that it needs no more, and cannot be done in less, and this is Ophir.
Let us now try these mines of Dos Santos by the laws of the monsoons, which we have already laid down in describing the voyage to India. The fleet, or ship, for Sofala, parting in June from Ezion-gaber, would run down before the northern monsoon to Mocha. Here, not the monsoon, but the direction of the Gulf changes, and the violence of the south-westers, which then reign in the Indian Ocean, make themselves at times felt even in Mocha Roads. The vessel therefore comes to an anchor in the harbour of Mocha, and here she waits for moderate weather and a fair wind, ​ which carries her out of the Straits of Babelmandeb, through the few leagues where the wind is variable. If her course was now to the East Indies, that is east-north-east, or north-east and by north, she would find a strong south-west wind that would carry her to any part of India, as soon as she cleared Cape Gardefan, to which she was bound.
But matters are widely different if she is bound for Sofala; her course is nearly south-west, and she meets at Cape Gardefan a strong south-wester that blows directly in her teeth. Being obliged to return into the gulf, she mistakes this for a trade-wind, because she is not able to make her voyage to Mocha but by the summer monsoon, which carries her no farther than the Straits of Babelmandeb, and then leaves her in the face of a contrary wind, a strong current to the northward, and violent swell.
The attempting this voyage with sails, in these circumstances, was absolutely impossible, as their vessels went only before the wind: if it was performed at all, it must have been by oars *, and great havock and loss of men must have been the consequence of the several trials. This is not conjecture only; the prophet Ezekiel describes the very fact. Speaking of the Tyrian voyages probably of this very one he says, "Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters (the ocean): the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas †." In short, the east, that is the north-east wind, was the very monsoon that was to carry them to Sofala, yet having no sails, being upon a lee-shore, a very bold ​ coast, and great swell, it was absolutely impossible with oars to save themselves from destruction.
At last philosophy and observation, together with the unwearied perseverance of man bent upon his own views and interest, removed these difficulties, and shewed the mariners of the Arabian Gulf, that these periodical winds, which, in the beginning, they looked upon as invincible barriers to the trading to Sofala, when once understood, were the very means of performing this voyage safely and expeditiously.
The vessel trading to Sofala sailed, as I have said, from the bottom of the Arabian Gulf in summer, with the monsoon at north, which carried her to Mocha. There the monsoon failed her by the change of the direction of the Gulf. The south-west winds, which blow without Cape Gardefan in the Indian Ocean, forced themselves round the Cape so as to be felt in the road of Mocha, and make it uneasy riding there. But these soon changed, the weather became moderate, and the vessel, I suppofe in the month of August, was safe at anchor under Cape Gardefan, where was the port which, many years afterwards, was called Promontorium Aromatum. Here the ship was obliged to stay all November, because all these summer months the wind south of the Cape was a strong south-wester, as hath been before said, directly in the teeth of the voyage to Sofala. But this time was not lost; part of the goods bought to be ready for the return was ivory, frankincense, and myrrh; and the ship was then at the principal mart for these.
I suppose in November the vessel sailed with the wind at north-east , with which she would soon have made her voy​ age: But off the coast of Melinda, in the beginning of December, she there met an anomalous monsoon at south-west, in our days first observed by Dr Halley, which cut off her voyage to Sofala, and obliged her to put in to the small harbour of Mocha, near Melinda, but nearer still to Tarshish, which we find here by accident, and which we think a atrong corroboration that we are right as to the rest of the voyage. In the Annals of Abyssinia, we see that Amda Sion, making war upon that coast in the 14th century, in a list of the rebellious Moorish vassals, mentions the Chief of Tarshish as one of them, in the very situation where we have now placed him.
Solomon's vessel, then, was obliged to stay at Tarshish till the month of April of the sccond year. In May, the wind set in at north-east, and probably carried her that same month to Sofala. All the time she spent at Tarshish. was not lost, for part of her cargo was to be brought from that place, and sne probably bought, bespoke, or left it there. From May of the second year, to the end of that monsoon in October, the vessel could not stir; the wind was north-east. But this time, far from being lost, was necessary to the traders for getting in their cargo, which we shall suppose was ready for them.
The ship fails, on her return, in the month of November of the second year, with the monsoon south-west, which in a very few weeks would have carried her into the Arabian Gulf. But off Mocha, near Melinda and Tarshish, she met the north-east monsoon, and was obliged to go into that port and stay there till the end of that monsoon; after which a south-wester came to her relief in May of the third year. ​ With the May monsoon she ran to Mocha within the Straits, and was there confined by the summer monsoon blowing up the Arabian Gulf from Suez, and meeting her. Here she lay till that monsoon, which in summer blows northerly from Suez, changed to a south-east one in October or November, and that very easily brought her up into the Elanitic Gulf, the middle or end of December of the third year. She had no need of more time to complete her voyage, and it was not possible she could do it in less. In short, she changed the monsoon six times, which is thirty-six months, or three years exactly; and there is not another combination of monsoons over the globe, as far as I know, capable to effect the same. The reader will please to consult the map, and keep it before him, which will remove any difficulties he may have. It is for his instruction this map has been made, not for that of the learned prelate * to whom it is inscribed, much more capable of giving additional lights, than in need of receiving any information I can give, even on this subject.
The celebrated Montesquieu conjectures, that Ophir was really on the coast of Africa; and the conjecture of that great man merits more attention than the assertions of ordinary people. He is too sagacious, and too enlightened, either to doubt of the reality of the voyage itself, or to seek for Ophir and Tarshish in China. Uninformed, however, of the particular direction of the monsoons upon the coast, first very slightly spoken of by Eudoxus, and lately observed and de​ lineated by Dr Halley, he was staggered upon considering that the whole distance, which employed a vessel in Solomon's time for three years, was a thousand leagues, scarcely more than the work of a month. He, therefore, supposes, that the reason of delay was owing to the imperfection of the vessels, and goes into very ingenious calculations, reasonings, and conclusions thereupon. He conjectures, therefore, that the ships employed by Solomon were what he calls junks * of the Red Sea, made of papyrus, and covered with hides or leather.
Pliny † had said, that one of these junks of the Red Sea was twenty days on a voyage, which a Greek or Roman vessel would have performed in seven; and Strabo ‡ had said the same thing before him.
This relative slowness, or swiftness, will not solve the difficulty. For, if these junks ║ were the vessels employed to Ophir, the long voyage, much more they would have been employed on the short one, to and from India; now they performed this within a year, which was all a Roman or Greek vessel could do, therefore this was not the cause. Those employed by Solomon were Tyrian and Idumean vessels, the best ships and sailers of their age. Whoever has seen the prodigious swell, the violent currents, and strong south-westers beyond the Straits of Babelmandeb, will not need any argument to persuade him, that no vessel made of papyrus, or leather, could live an hour upon that sea. The ​ junks, indeed, were light and convenient boats, made to cross the narrow gulf between the Sabeans and Homerites, or Cushites, at Azab upon the Red Sea, and carry provisions from Arabia Felix to the more desert coast of Azab. I have hinted, that the names of places sufficiently demonstrate the great loss of men that happened to the traders to Sofala before the knowledge of the monsoons, and the introduction of the use of sails.
I shall now consider how far the thing is confirmed by the names of places in the language of the country, such as they have retained among them to the present day.
There are three Mochas mentioned in this voyage, situated in countries very dissimilar to, and distant from, each other. The first is in Arabia Deserta, in lat. 30° nearly, not far from the bottom of the Gulf of Suez. The second is in lat. 13°, a small distance from the Straits of Babelmandeb. The third Mocha is in lat. 3° south, near Tarshish, on the coast of Melinda. Now, the meaning of Mocha, in the Ethiopic, is prison; and is particularly given to these three places, because, in any of them, a ship is forced to stay or be detained for months, till the changing of the monsoon lets her at liberty to pursue her voyage. At Mocha, near the bottom of the Gulf of Suez, a vessel, wanting to proceed southward to Babelmandeb, is kept here in prison all winter, till the summer monsoon sets her at liberty. At Mocha, in Arabia Felix, the same happens to any vessel wanting to proceed to Suez in the summer months; she may come up from the Straits of Babelmandeb to Mocha Road by the accidental direction of the head of the Gulf; but, in the month of May, the north-west wind obliges her to put into Mocha, ​ and there to stay till the south-easter relieves her in November. After you double Gardefan, the summer monsoon, at north-east, is carrying your vessel full sail to Sofala, when the anomalous monsoon takes her off the coast of Melinda, and forces her into Tarshish, where she is imprisoned for six months in the Mocha there. So that this word is very emphatically applied to those places where ships are necessarily detained by the change of monsoons, and proves the truth of what I have said.
The last Cape on the Abyssinian shore, before you run into the Straits, is Cape Defan, called by the Portuguese, Cape Dafui. This has no meaning in any language; the Abyssinians, on whose side it is, call it Cape Defan, the Cape of Burial. It was probably there where the east wind drove ashore the bodies of such as had been shipwrecked in the voyage. The point of the same coast, which stretches out into the Gulf, before you arrive at Babelmandeb, was, by the Romans, called Promontorium Aromatum, and since, by the Portuguese, Cape Gardefui. But the name given it by the Abyssinians and sailors on the Gulf is, Cape Gardefan, the Straits of Burial.
Still nearer the Straits is a small port in the kingdom of Adel, called Mete, i.e. Death, or, he or they are dead. And more to the westward, in the same kingdom, is Mount Felix, corruptly so called by the Portuguese. The Latins call it Elephas Mons, the Mountain of the Elephant; and the natives, Jibbel Feel, which has the fame signification. The Portuguese, who did not know that Jibbel Feel was Elephas Mons, being misled by the sound, have called it Jibbel Felix, the Happy Mountain, a name to which it has no sort of title. ​ The Straits by which we enter the Arabian Gulf are by the Portuguese called Babelmandeb, which is nonsense. The name by which it goes among the natives is Babelmandeb, the Gate or Port of Affliction. And near it Ptolemy * places a town he calls, in the Greek, Mandaeth, which appears to me to be only a corruption of Mandeb. The Promontory that makes the south side of the Straits, and the city thereupon, is Diræ, which means the Hades, or Hell, by Ptolemy † called A»pw. This, too, is a translation of the ancient name, because A»p» (or Diræ) has no signification in the Greek. A cluster of islands you meet in the canal, after passing Mocha, is called Jibbel Zekir, or, the Islands of Prayer for the remembrance of the dead. And still, in the same course up the Gulf, others are called Sebaat Gzier, Praise or Glory be to God, as we may suppose, for the return from this dangerous navigation.
All the coast to the eastward, to where Gardefan stretches out into the ocean, is the territory of Saba, which immemorially has been the mart of frankincense, myrrh, and balsam. Behind Saba, upon the Indian Ocean, is the Regio Cinnamonifera, where a considerable quantity of that wild cinnamon grows, which the Italian druggists call canella.
Inland near to Azab, as I have before observed, are large ruins, some of them of small stones and lime adhering strongly together. There is especially an aqueduct, which brought formerly a large quantity of water from a fountain in the mountains, which must have greatly contributed to the ​ beauty, health, and pleasure of Saba. This is built with large massy blocks of marble, brought from the neighbouring mountains, placed upon one another without lime or cement, but joined with thick cramps, or bars of brass. There are likewise a number of wells, not six feet wide, composed of pieces of marble hewn to parts of a circle, and joined with the same bars of brass also. This is exceedingly surprising, for Agatharcides * tells us, that the Alileans and Cassandrins, in the southern parts of Arabia, (just oppofite to Azab), had among them gold in such plenty, that they would give double the weight of gold for iron, triple its weight for brass, and ten times its weight for silver; that, in digging the earth, they found pieces of gold as big as olive-stones, but others much larger.
This seems to me extraordinary, if brass was at such a price in Arabia, that it could be here employed in the meanest and most common uses. However this be, the inhabitants of the Continent, and of the peninsula of Arabia opposite to it, of all denominations agree, that this was the royal seat of the Queen of Saba, famous in ecclesiastical history for her journey to Jerusalem; that these works belonged to her, and were erected at the place of her residence; that all the gold, silver, and perfumes came from her kingdom of Sofala, which was Ophir, and which reached from thence to Azab, upon the borders of the Red Sea, along the coast of the Indian Ocean.
It will very possibly be thought, that this is the place in which I should mention the journey that the Queen of Saba made into Palestine; but as the dignity of the expedition it​ self, and the place it holds in Jewish antiquities, merits that it should be treated in a place by itself, so the connection that it is supposed to have with the foundation of the monarchy of Abyssinia, the country whose history I am going to write, makes this particularly proper for the sake of connection; and I shall, therefore, continue the history of the trade of the Arabian Gulf to a period in which I can resume the narrative of this expedition without occasioning any interruption to either.
* ↑ * Ezek. chap. xxix. ver. 11.
* ↑ † Psalm. chap. lx. ver. 9. and Psal. cviii. ver. 10.
* ↑ ‡ 2 Sam. chap. viii. ver. 14. 1 Kings chap. x. ver. 15, 16.
* ↑ * 1 Kings, chap. ix. ver. 26. 2 Chron. chap. viii. ver. 17.
* ↑ † l Chron. chap. xxii. ver. 14, 15, 16. Chap. xxix. ver. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. -- Three thousand Hebrew talents of gold, reduced to our money, amount to twenty-one millions and six hundred thousand pounds Sterling.
* ↑ ‡ The value of a Hebrew talent appears from Exodus, chap. xxxviii. ver. 25, 26. For 603,550 persons being taxed at half a shekel each, they must have paid in the whole 301,775 now that sum is said to amount to 100 talents, 1775 shekels only; deduct the two latter sums and there will remain 300,000, which, divided by 108, will leave 3000 shekels for each of these talents.
* ↑ * 2 Chron. chap. viii. ver. 17.
* ↑ * 1 Kings, chap. x. ver. 22.
* ↑ † 1 Kings, chap. x. ver. 22. 2 Chron. chap. ix. ver. 21.
* ↑ * Vid. Voyage of Dos Santos, published by Le Grande.
* ↑ * See the map of this voyage.
* ↑ † Apud Euseb. Prœp. Evang. lib. 9.
* ↑ * Dionysii Periegesis, ver. 38. and Comment. Eustathii in eundem. Strabo, lib. 16. p. 765. Agathemeri Geographia, lib. 2. cap. II.
* ↑ * Ezek. chap. xxvii. ver. 6.
* ↑ † Ezek. chap. xxvii. ver. 26.
* ↑ * Dr Douglas, Bishop of Carlisle.
* ↑ * Vide L'Esprit des Loix, liv. xxi. cap. 6. p. 476.
* ↑ † Plin. lib. vi. cap. 22.
* ↑ ‡ Strabo, lib. xv.
* ↑ ║ I know there are contrary opinions, and the junks might have been yarious. Vide Salm.
* ↑ * Pto'. Geog. lib. 4. cap. 7.
* ↑ † id. ibid.
* ↑ * Agath. p. 60.