remind the people of the remoteness of their origin, for the priests
relegated its foundation almost to the period of the arrival of the
Phoenicians on the shores of the Mediterranean. The town had no supply
of fresh water, and there was no submarine spring like that of Arvad to
provide a resource in time of necessity; the inhabitants had, therefore,
to resort to springs which were fortunately to be found everywhere on
the hillsides of the mainland. The waters of the well of Eas el-Ain
had been led down to the shore and dammed up there, so that boats could
procure a ready supply from this source in time of peace: in time of war
the inhabitants of Tyre had to trust to the cisterns in which they had
collected the rains that fell at certain seasons.**

* The festival commemorating his death by fire was
celebrated at Tyre, where his tomb was shown, and in the
greater number of the Tyrian colonies.

** Abisharri (Abimilki), King of Tyre, confesses to the
Pharaoh Amenothes III. that in case of a siege his town
would neither have water nor wood. Aqueducts and conduits of
water are spoken of by Menander as existing in the time of
Shalmaneser; all modern historians agree in attributing
their construction to a very remote antiquity.

The strait separating the island from the mainland was some six or seven
hundred yards in breadth,* less than that of the Nile at several points
of its course through Middle Egypt, but it was as effective as a broader
channel to stop the movement of an army: a fleet alone would have
a chance of taking the city by surprise, or of capturing it after a
lengthened siege.

* According to the writers who were contemporary with
Alexander, the strait was 4 stadia wide (nearly 1/2 mile),
or 500 paces (about 3/8 mile), at the period when the
Macedonians undertook the siege of the town; the author
followed by Pliny says 700 paces, possibly over--mile wide.
From the observations of Poulain de Bossay, Renan thinks the
space between the island and the mainland might be nearly a
mile in width, but we should perhaps do well to reduce this
higher figure and adopt one agreeing better with the
statements of Diodorus and Quintus Curtius.

Like the coast region opposite Arvad, the shore which faced Tyre, lying
between the mouth of the Litany and ras el-Ain, was an actual suburb
of the city itself--with its gardens, its