[1] Dr. Vincent, In The 2nd Vol.

Of his Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, has a very elaborate commentary on this chapter of Ezekiel, in which he satisfactorily makes out the nature of most of the articles mentioned in it, as well as the locality of the places from which they are said to have come.

[2] One of the most celebrated gods of the Phoenicians was Melcartus. He is represented as a great navigator, and as the first that brought tin from the Cassiterides. His image was usually affixed to the stern of their vessels.

[3] In the time of Solomon, about two hundred years after the period when it is supposed the Phoenicians began to direct their course by the Lesser Bear, - it was 17 1/2 degrees from the North Pole: in the time of Ptolemy, about one hundred and fifty years after Christ, its distance had decreased to 12 degrees.

CHAPTER II.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY AND COMMERCIAL ENTERPRIZE, FROM THE AGE OF HERODOTUS TO THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, B.C. 324.

From the scanty materials respecting the Phoenicians, with which we are supplied by ancient history, it is evident that they founded several colonies, either for the purpose of commerce, or, induced by other motives, in different parts of Africa. Of these colonies, the most celebrated was that of Carthage: a state which maintained an arduous contest with Rome, during the period when the martial ardour and enterprize of that city was most strenuously supported by the stern purity of republican virtue, which more than once drove it to the brink of ruin, and which ultimately fell, rather through the vice of its own constitution and government, and the jealousies and quarrels of its own citizens, and through the operation of extraneous circumstances, over which it could have no controul, than from the fair and unassisted power of its adversary.

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