Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1890-06-27
Old Legends Proved True.

it has not infrequently been discov-
cred of late that some Of the state
ments of ancient writer's, which we
have regarded In our fancied wisdom
as too marvellous to be believed, are
nevertheless true. The geographer
PtOlemy; for instance, wrote that the
source of the Nile was in a mountain
range, known as the Mountains of the
Moon, because of the snow upon them.
Modern geogTaphers scOffed at the
idea that there could be such lofty
mountains under the equator, but
Stanley, in his ROW famous march to
the sea, skirted the foot of range of
snOw-clad mountains, called by him
Ruwenzori, from whose streams Is
formed the newly discovered Lake Al
bert Edward, the EXTREMIST source OF
the Nile.
So Herodotus, the Father of History,
repeatedly asserted that the PhGni-
clans thought that they originally came
from the Erythrean Sea or Persian
Gulf. This statement modern schOI-
ars have found very difficult to believe
the writer's of the article Phmnicia
in the last edition of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica style 1t a mere blunder."
An English traveller, however, has very
recently made discoveries in the Bah
rein Islands in the Persian Gulf which
render 1t almost certain that the great
historian was right,
These Islands are a small group "
ing about twenty miles off the Arabian
coast, and were formerly of great COM
merclal Importance. The inhabitants.
besides possessing a pearl fishery
which was noted in the DAYS of Alex
ander the Great, and now produces
the finest pearls in the world, carried
on an important trade with Arabia and
Persia. This they have almost entirely
lost, but with the construction of the
Euphrates Railway it viii doubtless
spring up again,
One of the two principal towns has
a singular water-supply in q spring
| which at high water Is six feet below
the surface Of the sea. Water is
brought up either by divers who go
/ down with skins, or by pushing a hOI-
| low bamboo down into it. At low tide
( there is very little water over it, and
! women with large amphOrfe and goat
! skins, which look very real and life
| like, though headless, wade out and
! fetch what water they require" The
Arabs believe that this and several
| other similar springs on the coast come
! flows beneath the Persian Gulf in an
underground channel, legend as old
! as the days of Pliny.
In the northern part of the largest
| island, which is twenty-seven miles
! long by ten broad, there is q very re-
markabIe collection of sepulchral
mounds, covering an area Of many
/ miles. Some of these are elevated
! only a few feet above the level Of the
/ desert. Others are more than forty
! feet high, and about four hundred feet
| in circumference. Several of these
/ have recently been excavated by Mr..
/ j. Theodore Bent, u Well-knOwn Eng
! ish traveller, who has given an account
! of his discoveries to the Royal Geo
/ graphical Society.
He says that they consist of two
/ chambers, the one above the other, as
/ is the case with some Phmnician tOmbs
! Just uncovered in ancient Carthage
/ In the upper chamber of one which he
! examined were the bones Of an animal,
| presumably q horse, and innumerable
! fragments of IyOry-bOxes, ornaments,
/ bits of small statues. Many of these
/ fragments were Ornamented with pat
/ terms which bear a close and unmis-
/ taxable resemblance to worries found
/ IN PhOanlClan tOmDS on the Medlt6r-
ranean. Our readers viii doubtless
remember that King Solomon got ivory
! by means of the ships of Hiram, the
Ph9nician king Of Tyre.
| The lower chamber was more care
! fully constructed than the upper, and
contained human bones together with
! the remains of drapery which had been
/ hung around the walls, another Phoe-
nician custom. The ivory fragments
have been deposited in the British
Museum, and one of the officials has
recently publicly said that "as far as
the evidence went at present, he
thought the Museum authorities were
! prepared to admit that the Bahrein Isl
ands probably represented a primitive
! site of the PhRnician race"
/ This probable confirmation of the
statement of HerOdOtus IS certainly
more satisfactory than the fayorite oc-
cupation Of some modern writers, the
/ proving the falsity of stories which
have always been confidently believed
such stories, for instance, as that OF
/ the Swiss hero, William Tell.