The ships were
drawn up, gang-planks were very heavily laden with "marvels of the
country of Punt." There were heaps of myrrh, resin, of fresh myrrh
trees, ebony and pure ivory, cinnamon wood, incense, baboons, monkeys,
dogs, natives, and children. "Never was the like brought to any king
of Egypt since the world stands." And the ships voyaged safely back
to Thebes with all their booty and with pleasant recollections of the
people of Somaliland.

[Illustration: THE ARK ON ARARAT AND THE CITIES OF NINEVEH AND BABYLON.
From Leonardo Dati's map of 1422.]

In spite of these little expeditions the Egyptian world seemed still
very small. The Egyptians thought of the earth with its land and sea
as a long, oblong sort of box, the centre of which was Egypt. The sky
stretched over it like an iron ceiling, the part toward the earth being
sprinkled with lamps hung from strong cables lighted by night and
extinguished by day. Four forked trunks of trees upheld the sky roof.
But lest some storm should overthrow these tree trunks there were four
lofty peaks connected by chains of mountains. The southern peak was
known as the "Horn of the Earth," the eastern, the "Mountain of Birth,"
the western, the "Region of Life," the northern was invisible. And
why? Because they thought the Great Sea, the "Very Green," the
Mediterranean, lay between it and Egypt. Beyond these mountain peaks,
supporting the world, rolled a great river, an ocean stream, and the
sun was as a ball of fire placed on a boat and carried round the ramparts
of the world by the all-encircling water.

So we realise that the people living in Babylonia about the river
Euphrates, and those living in Egypt about the river Nile, had very
strange ideas about the little old world around them.

CHAPTER II

EARLY MARINERS

The law of the universe is progress and expansion, and this little
old world was soon discovered to be larger than men thought.

Now in Syria--the highway between Babylonia and Egypt--dwelt a tribe
of dusky people known as Phoenicians. Some have thought that they were
related to our old friends in Somaliland, and that long years ago they
had migrated north to the seacoast of that part of Syria known as
Canaan.

Living on the seashore, washed by the tideless Mediterranean, they
soon became skilful sailors. They built ships and ventured forth on
the deep; they made their way to the islands of Cyprus and Crete and
thence to the islands of Greece, brin