a great emporium of antiquity, of which history has preserved to us nothing beyond the name, and an obscure indication of the nature of its commerce. Our only acquaintance with its existence is derived from allusions in the historical and prophetic Scriptures to the trade and navigation of the Phoenicians in connection with Tarshish, and to the commodities which the Tyrians imported from it. To the Hebrews, whose geographical acquaintance with the world barely extended beyond the countries bordering the east of the Mediterranean, "Tarshish" appears to have been a term suggestive of immense and mysterious distance. To them, the Caucasus and Chaldea were as the "north and sides of the earth." Egypt and Arabia were the boundaries of their knowledge to the south, and in the direction of the west they knew of nothing more remote than the shores of Greece. Beyond these "ends of the earth," stretched unknown seas, in which the "isles of the Gentiles" were believed to be the farthest verge of the habitable world. Even Moses, in describing the dispersion of mankind after the deluge, states that Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim divided these islands amongst themselves (Gen. x. 4; 1 Chron. i. 7). So far were these islands removed from countries with which they were familiar, that flight to them was supposed to baffie all pursuit; the fugitive was concealed there from the sight even of the Creator himself, so that Jonah, when seeking to escape from Joppa, "went down into a ship to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord" (Jon. i. 3).

The Phoenicians, in this early age, had undisputed possession of the navigation of all seas; the Egyptians made no effort to compete for the commerce of their own shores; the genius of the Hebrews discovered intercourse with strangers; and even, when Solomon and Jehoshaphat aspired to participate in maritime trade, their efforts were confined to the Eanitic Gulf of the Red Sea, so that, till the success of the Phoenicians inspired the Greeks with a passion for trade, the ships of Tyre had a practical monopoly in the Mediterranean. The ignorance of the earth and its productions, which thus prevailed universally, aided the Phoenicians in the policy of concealment, by which they sought to withhold all knowledge of the nature and operations of their commerce. Their ships sailed over unknown seas, and came back laden with commodities of which no stranger was permitted to discover either the origin or the countries which produced them. On all such points, Strabo (L iii.) implies that any inventive explanation given by the Phoenicians, "Vespuce, was not entitled to no greater credit than the Pianus field of Carthage," Amber, which was brought from the vicinity of the Baltic, was represented to be the tears of sea-birds that were for Meleager (Pliny, L xxxvii.); frankincense was the produce of trees guarded by serpents (Herod. iii. 107); cassia grew in a shallow lake protected by winged animals like bats (ib. 110); and cinnamon was "Tarshish, the lining taken from birds' nests built with clay against the face of precipitous mountains," "in those countries where Bacchus was nurtured" (ib. 111). So jealously did they conceal the course of their trading expeditions, that Strabo tells the story of a Phoenician commander, whose ship, on her voyage from Gades to the Cassiterides, in search of tin, being followed by a Roman galley, rather than betray the secret of the locality in which tin was to be found, destroyed his vessel on a shoal, and on his return obtained compensation from the state for his fidelity (Strabo L iii. 5).

With the exception of the Phoenicians, no seaman had ever ventured into the Atlantic, or passed beyond the Pillars of Hercules. From that mysterious promontory they saw with awe the sun sink into an unknown sea, and heard Strabo conjecture that Homer confounded "Tarshish" and "Tartessos" (L ii. 147). Legends in later times survived that those who dared to explore its shores had discovered the Islands of the Blest, beyond the boundary of the earth, where, as Homer says, winter, rains, and snow are alike unknown, but "the never-failing breath of the ocean refreshes the weariness of the inhabitants" (Odys. iv. 565).

Availing themselves of the prevailing ignorance, and interested in perpetuating it, the merchants of Tyre who navigated these remote seas represented Tarshish to be contiguous to them, and appear to have assigned it as the native country, or at least, the far-distant emporium in which they professed to have found evidence arising concerning the origin of which it was their object to withhold information. Hence a voyage to Tarshish was regarded as in the highest degree adventurous and mysterious. The knowledge of the route was possessed only by "the wise men of Tyre who were her pilots" (Ezekiel, xxviii. 8). Sidon and Arvad supplied the crews, while the inhabitants of other parts of the coast took on themselves the building and equipment of the vessels to be engaged in such perilous expeditions. These ships, from their superior size, and probably from some peculiarities in their construction, were known as the "ships of Tarshish," a term which afterwards became generic, and served to indicate vessels of sufficient magnitude for voyages of similar duration and risk. In the Septuagint they are designated indifferently—"ships of Tarshish," "ships of Ophir" (Ps. xlvii. 7; Isaiah lx. 9); "sea-going ships," "ships of Tarshish" (Isaiah xi. 16); and "merchant-men," "ships of Tarshish" (Ezek. xxvii. 20). A most interesting account of these vessels has been preserved to us as contained in the "Books of the Xenophon," who, in the fifth century n.c., thus describes one which he had the opportunity of inspecting. "I once saw, I think, the most beautiful and accurate arrangement of implements possible, when I went on board that large Phoenician vessel to look over it; for I beheld a vast number of articles severally arranged in an extremely small space. For the ship is brought into harbour and taken out again by means of various instruments of wood and tow; it pursues its voyage with the aid of much that is called suspended tackle; it is equipped with many machines to oppose hostile vessels; it carries about in it many weapons for the men; it conveys all the utensils such as people use in a house; for each company that take their meals together; and in addition to all this, it is freighted with merchandise, which the owner of the ship transports in it for the purpose of sale. And all the things of which I am speaking were stowed in a space not much larger than a certain instrument of him that holds half a score dinner couches. Yet I observed that they were severally arranged in such a manner that they were not in the way of one another, nor required anybody to seek for them, nor were unprepared for use, nor difficult to remove from their places, so as to cause any delay when it was necessary to employ them suddenly."

(Xenophon, Oeconomicus, viii. 17). Ezekiel, who wrote a century earlier than Xenophon, has left in his prophecy the most detailed exposition extant of the nature of the trade which was then carried on in ships thus described, as well as by caravans overland. The imports from Tarshish, he says, consisted of a "multitude of all kinds of riches," but the portion he particularizes is limited entirely to metals—silver, tin, lead, and iron. By sea, Tyre imported materials for ship-building from the coasts of Syria and Asia Minor; rudders and sails were bought from the Peloponnesus and Egypt; Greece supplied slaves and brazen utensils, while "Tarshish was her merchant for silver, iron, tin, and lead," the trade for the latter being in this instance limited to articles the produce of Western Europe (Ezek. x. xxvii). Had the enumeration terminated here, there would have been comparatively little difficulty in determining the position of Tarshish as being near to the junction of the Mediterranean with the Atlantic; but the Books of Kings and Chronicles particularise articles of an origin so obviously Indian, but nevertheless imported from some place known as Tarshish, that we are driven to the conjecture that there must have been two emporiums, one in the eastern hemisphere and another in the west, each bearing that designation.

The uncertainty as to this, and the attempts to concentrate in one locality the attributes of both, have involved the question of its site in confusion, which nothing but the above solution seems likely Tarshish was conjectured at one time to mean Tar- sus in Cilicia, and at another Tartessus in the south of Spain; the authors of the Septuagint translated it Carthage, Καρχηδόν (Ezek. xxviii. 12, 25; Is. xxiii. 1, 4). Later geographers have assumed it to be a Phoenician epithet for any great emporium beyond sea; and Goselin and Vincent conjecture that it may mean the sea itself. Coxe supposes that the word may be a modification of the Sanskrit term Torasās, applied to an "after-predatory commerce," a con- jecture which has one fact to sustain, viz., that all accounts of the trade of the Tyrians, as well as that of Jeremiah (c. x. 9) as those of Isaiah and Ezekiel, describe silver and silver plates as one of the imports from Tarshish.

Close and more recent investigation, however, has rendered it probable that the references to Tarshish in the Sacred Writings point to two distinct emporiums, each remote from Tyre, and still more distant from each other; one situated at the extremity of the Mediterranean, and the other in the Indian Ocean. Expressions in Scripture seem to indicate that both were islands (Gen. x. 4; Psalm lxxii. 10, &c.). This may arise either from the habit of de- signating almost every unexplored country an island; or from the fact, that in the list of maritime nations, the commerce of distant countries was liable to risk from hostile races, an island was most generally chosen as an emporium, perhaps in consideration of its comparative security from surprise, as well as its superior facilities for escape in case of danger. That one important place known as Tarshish lay to the west of Phenicia, is established by the allusions in Isaiah to the position of Cyprus or Chittim, in the course of the ships returning thence towards Tyre (c. xxiii. 1); and Jonah took shipping at Joppa to sail for Tarshish, a fact which shows it to have been within the navigation of the Mediterranean. Tartessus in Spain is generally, and no doubt correctly, supposed to have been that particular emporium; but such is the confusion that obscures even this branch of the inquiry, that Tartessus has been applied at one time to designate the greater part of Spain and Portugal:

"Non Tartessum illud satanam sive Tagi—CLARIDUS in Ref., i. 163."

At another it represented the entire country of Bætica, the modern Andalusia; and again, only the portion of it lying south of the Bætis or Guadalquivir (Strabo, iii. 150). The Bætis itself is called the "silver-beaded Tartessus" by Steochorus, as was also its city which was said to have been built in an intermural angle lying between two of its branches. If the western Tarshish was situated in an island, it is most probably to be identified with Gades, the mo- dern Isla de Leon, on which Cadiz is built; and which Bochart, on the authority of Aristotle, Strabo, Pausanias, and Avienus, believes to be the ancient Tartessus (Phaleg, lib. vii. 7; Chronicon, L. 34). If so, Tartessus may possibly be a compound of ἀσπερος and νῆσος, "the island of Tartessus."

Assuming the book of Genesis to have been written in the fif- teenth century b.c., the mention there made of Tarshish establishes the early knowledge of the Spanish coast by the Phœnician mariners; and the notice in Exodus of the "torah" (which the Septuagint renders a chrysolite, and the authorised version a beryl), amongst the gems in the breastplate of Aaron (Ex. xxxix. 20), shows that precious stones were amongst the early imports from Tarshish.

The productions of the country surrounding it, one of the most fer- tile in the universe, were so varied and abundant as to justify the description of Ezekiel, that Tarshish was the "merchant of Tyre, by reason of the multitude of all riches" (xxviii. 12). It yielded oil and wine, gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and quicksilver. The coast was equally boundant with the land; and on the coins of Tar- shish, the image of a fish with an ear of corn was emblematic at once both of the sea and soil. To attest their appreciation of these advantages, the Phœnicians founded a temple in ease of their colonies, and erected a temple to Hercules Melcarthus, where his worship spread over the south of the peninsula, and was commemorated by the bestowal of his name on the promontories of Abyla and Calpe, which, like gigantic columns, guard the entrance to the Mediter- ranean. The decay of Tartessus, and the causes which produced it, are as obscure as the period of its foundation and the origin of its commercial renown. Six centuries n.c. the Greeks began to partici- pate in its trade, the king, Arganthonius, having then welcomed the galleys of the Phœnicians, whom he had invited to settle in his territories (Herodotus, i. 163). The Romans drew from it some of their choicest delicacies, and Anius Gelius, amongst the luxuries of the table, quotes the lampreys of the Tartessian Sea (Noct. Att., vii. 16). In all probability the aggrandizement of Carthage led to the decline of Tartessus; amidst neglect and obscurity, the events are unrecorded which led to its fall, and the time of its ultimate extinction is unknown.

Until a comparatively recent period, still greater uncertainty prevailed as to the second great emporium in the Indian Seas, to which the Sacred Writings allude under the designation of Tarshish. The facts recorded concerning it are briefly these:—In the tenth century n.c. the Hebrews, stimulated by the maritime success of the Phœnicians, aspired to become masters of a similar commerce; but having no ports in the Mediterranean, the attention of Solomon was necessarily directed to the Red Sea, where his father David had wrested from the Idumeans the upper portion of the Elanitic Gulf, with the harbours of Elath and Ezion-Geber. Equally ignorant of ship-building and navigation, Solomon obtained from Hiram, the king of Tyre, the assistance of artificers to construct a fleet of mer- chantmen ("ships of Tarshish") at Ezion-Geber, and pilots to con- duct them to Ophir—which once in every three years, they re- turned, bringing alabaster and precious stones, gold and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks (1 Kings vii. 26; 2 Chron. ii. 16; viii. 18, &c.). Sometime afterwards, Jehoshaphat, being then king of Judah, attempted to fit out a similar expedition, in conjunction with Aca- ziah, the king of Israel. But they had no longer the co-operation of the Tyrian mariners and pilots; so that, having encountered an east wind, probably the N.E. monsoon which blows in the Indian seas, "the ships were broken, and they were not able to go to Tarshish" (1 Kings xxii. 48; 2 Chron. xx. 36; Psalm xlviii. 7). These passages and their context show that Tarshish was an em- porium intermediate between the Red Sea and Ophir, at which the productions of the latter were procurable. To determine the posi- tion of Ophir, it was therefore indispensable to ascertain the actual site of the other; and no point of biblical geography has given rise to more ingenious and erudite conjectures than the actual situation of Ophir. It has been variously placed in Armenia, India, and Arabia; at Ormus, in the Persian Gulf; at Sofala, on the east coast of Africa, and at Angola, on the west; at Carthage; at Saint Domingo, in Mexico; and in Peru. Josephus, however, with better judgment, declares Ophir to be an Indian region—the Golden Chersonese of the Greeks, and now the Malayan peninsula (Antiq. Jud., lib. viii. c. 6). The Alexandrian geographer, Hesychius, follows the opinion of Josephus, and both he and Seidus declare Ophir to be in India. One evidence which materially sustains the same conclusion is the fact, first adverted to by Le Poivre, who was envoy to Cochin China in the middle of the last century, that ophir is still the term ap- plied in Malaya, Sumatra, and the Eastern Archipelago, to desig- nate the gold-mines of Ceylon (Philosophie, &c., p. 123). Bochart had previously recorded his opinion that Ophir was to be sought for in the Indian Seas, and goes so far as to say that he visited the island of Ceylon; while Tarshish was supposed by him to have been near the opposite promontory of Cape Comorin (Philog., ii. 10; Cha- maur, i. 46). Subsequent investigation has so far served to correct the dictum of Bochart, as to suggest that Tarshish may have been in Ceylon; whilst Ophir, as Josephus and other authorities had supposed, lay still further to the east. The probability of this solution, and the facts which appear to sustain it, are as fol- lows:—Although the Sinhalese themselves have at no period been addicted to commerce, Ceylon lying midway between the two great maritime countries of China and Arabia, became, at a very remote era, the centre and emporium of a great foreign trade. The Chinese brought thither silk and other wares destined for countries beyond the Euphrates; and the Persians and Arabsians met them in Ceylon with their own articles to be there exchanged. The inhabitants of the opposite coast of India, aware of the natural wealth of Ceylon, participated largely in these operations; and the Tamils, who eagerly engaged in the pearl fishery, gave to the Gulf of Mannar the name of Solahambu, "the sea of gain."

The Greeks, during the Indian expedition of Alexander, acquired the knowledge of this flourishing trade, and of the riches of Ceylon, then known by the name under which Milton speaks of it—

"India's utmost isle, Taprobane."

Onesicritus, the historian, who acted as one of Alexander's pilots, is said to have visited Ceylon, and brought back accounts of its valuable productions and exports: its gems, its elephants, its ivory, and tortoises. Egypt, under the Ptolemies, took a part in the active trade of Ceylon; and the Romans, after the discovery, by Ptolemy, of the periodical monsoon winds, carried it on with in- creased energy. Antony, who had the advantage of personal commu- nications with the embassy sent from Ceylon to the Emperor Clau- dius, describes not only the precious productions of Ceylon, but also its commerce with China, and the Sikkimese territory lay beyond the Himalayas. (Plliny, lib. vi. ch. 24.) The same writer has referred to Pliny the mode of trading among their own countrymen pre- cisely as it is practised by the Veddhas in Ceylon at the present day; the parties to the barter being concealed from each other, the one depositing the articles to be exchanged in a given place, and the other, if the terms were agreed to, removing them unseen, and leaving behind what they give in return.

The importance of Ceylon, as a rendezvous for trading ships, has been successively recorded by Ptolemy, by the author of the Peri- plus of the Erythraean Sea, attested to by Arrian, by Agathe- aurus, Marcianus of Heraclea, and Cosmas Indicopleutes. The Arabian and Persian writers, from the eighth to the eleventh century, equally describe the trade which enslaved Ceylon, in for- warding the productions of the east to be distributed over the coun- tries of the west—and the native historians of China, so early as the third century, have left authentic records, with detailed particulars of the articles in which this important commerce was carried on. (See Sir J. Emerson Tennent's Account of Ceylon, &c., part iv., c. 3.)

Gibbon dwells with particularity on the nature and extent of this luxurious commerce (Decline and Fall, c. xii.), and looking only to the facilities of its "capacious harbour," pronounces Trimnemal to have been the port and emporium of it. (See Trincomalee.) Bertolacci, on other grounds, conjectures it to have been at Mantotte, on the west coast of Ceylon (Bertolacci, Ceylon, &c., pp. 18, 19); but a combination of historical proofs serve to vindicate the distinction of the bay and harbour of Point de Galle, at the S.W. extremity of the island. Abouzaid, an Arab who wrote in the ninth century, alludes to the emporium in which the ships from the Persian Gulf went to collect those from China and Malacca, by the designation of Kalah, and as one form of the Arabic letter K is pronounced like G, Kalah, in their dialect, would be pronounced Gala, a name which has served to identify not only the town but the district, and the tribe of Galas who, from a very early period, inhabited this region of Ceylon. Point de Galle, therefore, in remote ages occupied a position in relation to trade of equal, if not of greater importance than that which attaches to it at the present day. It was the central emporium of a commerce which in turn enriched every country of Western Asia, fostered the renown of the Ptolemies, rendered the wealth and the precious products of Arabia a gorgeous mystery, heightened the Trieri with "barbaric pearls and gold," and identified the inhabitants of Borneo with the mariners of Hiram with associations of adventure and romance. In later times, it was the mart of the Portuguese whilst they held possession of Ceylon; and afterwards of the Dutch, when they became masters of the island.

From three centuries, therefore, before the Christian era, down to the present time, there is one unbroken chain of evidence to prove that Point de Galle was the grand emporium for the commerce of all nations east of the Red Sea; and the Scripture narrative shows that, in proceeding to Tarshish, the fleets of Solomon and Hiram navigated the Red Sea, and took an easterly course in the direction of Ophir. The ships intended for the voyage were built in the Gulf of Akaba; the rowsers coasted along the shores of Arabia and Persia (Ezek. xxviii. 19; xxxvi. 15), headed by an escort (Psalm xxvii. 26; Psal. xlviii. 7), and the port for which they were bound would appear to have been situated in an island, governed by kings (Psal. lxxxi. 10), carrying on an extensive foreign trade (Isaiah xxiii. 2). The voyage occupied three years in going and returning (1 Kings x. 22); and the cargoes brought home to Ezion-Geber consisted of gold and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. Gold could have been shipped at Galle from the vessels which brought it from Ophir. "Silver spread into plates," which is particularised by Jeremiah as an export of Tarshish, is one of the substances on which the sacred books of the Sinhalese are even now inscribed; ivory is found in Ceylon, and must have been both abundant and full grown there before the discovery of gunpowder led to the wanted destruction of elephants; apes are included among the animals, and peacocks are found in numbers. It is very remarkable, too, that the terms by which these articles are designated in the Hebrew Scriptures are identical with the Tamil names by which some of them are called in Ceylon to the present day. Thus, tukveyin, which is rendered "peacocks" in one version, may be recognised in tokei, the modern name for these birds; kopi, apes, is the same in both languages; and the Sanskrit iisha, ivory, is identical with the Tamil iveram.

Thus, by geographical position, by indigenous productions, and by the fact of its having been from time immemorial the resort of merchant-ships from Egypt, Arabia, and Persia, on the one side, and India, Java, and China, on the other, Galle seems to present a combination of every peculiar essential to determine the problem so long under discussion. It is certain, and exhibit the necessary data for inferring that it is the eastern Tarshish of the same historians, and the great oriental mart frequented so long ago by the ships of Solomon and the Phoenicians. (See Bochart's Geographia Sacra; Vincent's Commerce of the Ancients, vol. ii.; Heeren's Historical Researches; Cooley's History of Island and Maritime Discovery, vol. i.; Kenrick's Phenicia; Reinaud's Relation des Voyages, &c., tom. i.; Sir J. Emerson Tennent's Ceylon; Gibbon's Decline and Fall; Robertson's India, &c.)