=The Secrets Kept by the Phoenicians.=--The Phoenicians did not care to
have mariners of other peoples come into competition with them. On the
return from these far countries they concealed the road which they had
travelled. No one in antiquity knew where were the famous Isles of the
Cassiterides from which they got their tin. It was by chance that a
Greek ship discovered Spain, with which the Phoenicians had traded for
centuries. Carthage drowned the foreign merchants whom they found in
Sardinia or on the shore of Gibraltar. Once a Carthaginian
merchantman, seeing a strange ship following it, was run aground by
the pilot that the foreigner might not see where he was going.
=Colonies.=--In the countries where they traded, the Phoenicians
founded factories, or branch-houses. They were fortified posts on a
natural harbor. There they landed their merchandise, ordinarily
cloths, pottery, ornaments, and idols.[40] The natives brought down
their commodities and an exchange was made, just as now European
merchants do with the negroes of Africa. There were Phoenician markets
in Cyprus, in Egypt, and in all the then barbarous countries of the
Mediterranean--in Crete, Greece, Sicily, Africa, Malta, Sardinia, on
the coasts of Spain at Malaga and Cadiz, and perhaps in Gaul at
Monaco.
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