himself for two or three years among the still wild tribes of Turkestan, tells us that after his liberation from the Turks, and while traveling in eastern Persia towards the capital, he found a tree which attracted his attention because its fibre reminded him of that of the Lignum Vitæ, which tree the natives called “The Yalgam.” Here we have Solomon’s algum tree with the name scarcely modified. Would it be the strangest thing that ever happened if these “yalgam,” “almug,” or “algum” trees, so beautiful as to be unequalled by anything known in Palestine, and for that reason set up as ornaments in God’s house, should turn out in the day when all things become known to be rosewood and mahogany from the west coast of Central America, taken on board by Solomon’s servants on their return from Parvaim or Peru and the old mines of Potosi, where they had gone for the gold which filled the coffers of Solomon. It may be said that such would be a long voyage; true, but not much longer than a voyage to the Orkneys. Authentic profane history tells us that between six and seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, Pharaoh Necho, King of Egypt, built a fleet in the Red Sea, manned it with Phœnician sailors and sent them out upon the waters to discover the shape and dimensions of the continent of Africa. These sailors passed down through the straits of Bab et Mandel and clear around the Cape of Good Hope and the continent of Africa more than two thousand years before Vasco Degama, and coming in through the straits of Gibraltar after an absence of about two years. Their food supply run low, their supply was mainly wheat, they tied up their ships, landed, plowed the ground with sharpened sticks, cast their bread, not upon the waters, but upon the ground, and thus raised a new crop of wheat, preparing to supply their wants until they should return to Egypt, that eternal land of plenty.

It will be remembered that for centuries previous to the close of the Punic wars under Hannibal the Phœnician people owned and controlled the whole north of Africa, west of Egypt, and the whole of Spain up to the Ebro, and the whole of Cyprus and a very large portion of Sicily, and that when the ancient writers, and even modern writers speak of Spain, the Carthagenians and northern Africa, they refer to the people who sprang from the commercial cities on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean sea, occupying a territory of not more than one hundred miles in extent north and south, and extending back into Syria not more than fifteen miles, whence all these people sprang, and applied to them the general term of Phœnicians.

From the authorities we have quoted we think there can be no doubt but that here and there a learned man among the Greek scholars had come to believe that some eastern navigator had discovered a western world exceedingly productive and beautiful, and that a population of eastern origin had sprung up and existed in the lands so discovered.

IF THE WESTERN CONTINENT HAD REALLY BEEN DISCOVERED ACCIDENTALLY, OR OF SET PURPOSE, WHAT EASTERN NATION WOULD BE MOST LIKELY TO HAVE BEEN THE DISCOVERERS OF THIS WESTERN WORLD.

Nineveh and Babylon are never spoken of as having sent even a keel boat out upon the seas. Egypt has been called the “Cradle of The Arts” and the “Birthplace of Science and Civilization,” but Egypt never attained the maritime power or skill to enable her to navigate the waters of the Mediterranean beyond the mouths of her eternal river.

Greece, afterwards so celebrated for science, art and philosophy, was at the day of which Homer sung, a mere association of savage groups, engaged in wars instead of seeking commercial profits in distributing the products of civilized life among the nations of mankind.

And Romulus and Remus had not yet emerged from the sheep folds upon the Italian hills. But very early in the history of the world, and as students of history believe, earlier than the call of Abraham, the interests of mankind had called into existence along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea an active and intelligent population which had engaged in commerce as a means of subsistence, and were carrying it on with such success as was possible in the then condition of the world of mankind. A civilization had sprung up at a very early period along the banks of the united rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and from the Persian gulf to Nineveh and Nimroud, where was produced a great variety of articles of necessity and luxury unknown to the rest of the world. We all understand the story told of Aehan, who secreted in the floor of his tent a Babalonish garment about fourteen hundred years before the Christian era, while Israel was battling against Ai See Joshua, Chap. 8. The children of Japhet had passed up through Persia to the Caucasus, and from the Caucasus around the Black Sea to the waters of the Danube and the Grecian Islands. The luxuries produced in the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris, called Mesopotamia, furnished a ready basis for a successful commerce across the desert by the way of Damascus to the shores of the Mediterranean; and it was by this means that a commerce sprang up along these shores such as the world had never seen, and which rendered the people resident there the leaders in all the arts of life, including the art of navigation, throughout the then known world, a result but twice paralleled on earth, once in the middle ages at Venice and once in our own age at our magical Chicago. This enabled this people to become the leaders of their race down to about six hundred years before Christ, when there came that terrible war wherein Nebuchadnezzar, by besieging Tyre, caused “every head of that people to become bald and every shoulder to become pealed.” Tyre subsisted after the siege of Nebuchadnezzar, but Tyre never attained again the prosperity or influence which she possessed at the commencement of this memorable siege. She had before this time planted two hundred and fifty cities upon the north coast of Africa, including the celebrated city of Carthage. She had settled and occupied two hundred cities in the territory of Spain, and for centuries occupied the whole of that country up to the Ebro. The Jewish historians speak of Spain as Tharshish. Greek writers speak of Spain as Tartesus. Jewish historians and prophets speak of the ships of Tharshish as the most magnificent sea-going crafts known to the world, as we for half of a century boasted of our Baltimore Clipper. Her sailors passed beyond the Pillars of Hercules and passed up the northwest coast of France and established their religion, the worship of Baal, or the sun, among the simple people of Bretagne so firmly and universally that at this day at Carnac, in the Morbihan, there stand more Phœnician funereal monuments of unknown antiquity than can be found together in any form of religion in any other portion of the world’s surface. They discovered tin in the Scilly Islands, off the coast of Cornwall, and wrought those mines for centuries. Those Islands were known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as the Cassiterrides, or Tin Islands. They worked both tin and copper mines in Cornwall, and made profits on the sale of the products throughout the known world. They passed up the British channel and through the German Ocean, and in the immense sand dunes at the mouth of the Baltic discovered and utilized that beautiful product of the primeval forests called amber, which they dug from the sand hills. They took with them their priests (the priests of Baal) and introduced the worship of the sun, and made that worship paramount and universal in England, Ireland and Scotland, as well as in