History of the Scottish Nation (Complpete)

The Phoenicians the first Discoverers of Britain, They trade with it in Tin, Greatness of Sidon and Tyre partly Owing to British Trade, Triumphal Gates of Shalmanezer, Tyrian Harbours, and probable size of Tyrian Ships, When and whence came the first Inhabitants of Britain? The resting place of the Ark the starting-point of the enquiry, Mount Ararat, The Four great Rivers, Their courses regulate the Emigration of the Human Family, The Mountain girdle of the Globe, Divided by it into a Southern and Northern World, For what purpose? The Three Fountainheads of the World’s Population, Ham peoples Egypt, Shem, Arabia and Persia, Migration of Japhet’s Descendants, Two great Pathways, The basin of the Mediterranean, The slopes of the Caucasus running betwixt the Caspian and the Euxine, The Sons of Japhet travel by both routes, The one arrives in Britain through the Pillars of Hercules, The Other by the Baltic, The Journey stamps its imprint on each, Their foot-prints, The Sons of Gomer, or Cymri, the first Inhabitants of Britain, While Alexander was overrunning the world by his arms, and Greece was enlightening it with her arts, Scotland lay hidden beneath the cloud of barbarism, and had neither name nor place among the nations of the earth.1 Its isolation, however, was not complete and absolute. Centuries before the great Macedonian had commenced his victorious career, the adventurous navigators of the Phoenician seaboard had explored the darkness of the hyperborean ocean. The first to steer by the pole-star, they boldly adventured where less skillful mariners would have feared to penetrate. Within the hazy confine of the North Sea they descried an island, swathed in a mild if humid air, and disclosing to the eye, behind its frontier screen of chalk cliffs, the pleasing prospect of wooded hills, and far expanding meadows, roamed over by numerous herds, and inhabitants. The Phoenicians oft revisited this remote, and to all but themselves unknown shore, 2 but the enriching trade which they carried on with it they retained for centuries in their own hands. Their ships might be seen passing out at the “Pillars of Hercules” on voyages of unknown destination, and, after the lapse of months, they would return laden with the products of regions, which had found as yet no name on the chart of geographer.3 But the source of this trade they kept a secret from the rest of the nations. By and by, however, it began to be rumoured that the fleets seen going and returning on these mysterious voyages traded with an island that lay far to the north, and which was rich in a metal so white and lustrous that it had begun to be used as a substitute for silver. In this capacity it was employed now to lend a meretricious glitter to the robe of the courtesan, and now to impart a more legitimate splendour to the mantle of the magistrate. In process of time Other sea-faring peoples, taught by the example of the Phoenicians to sail by the stars, and to brave the terrors of unknown seas in pursuit of wealth, followed in the track which these early merchants had been the first to open. The tin of Cornwall and of the Scilly Islands, the “Cassiterides” 4 of the ancients, began to circulate among the nations of Asia Minor, and was not unknown even to the tribes of the Arabian desert. It is interesting to think that Britain had already begun to benefit nations which knew not as yet to pronounce her name. But it was on the Syrian shore, and among the maritime tribes that nestled in the bays of Lebanon, that the main stream of this traffic continued to diffuse its various riches. The wealth and power of the Phoenician state were largely owing to its trade with Britain. Its capital Sidon, was nursed by the produce of our mines into early greatness. The site of Rome was still a morass; the cities of Greece were only mean hamlets; the palaces of Babylon were brick-built structures; and Jerusalem was but a hill fort; while Sidon had risen in a splendour and grown to a size that made men speak of her, even in the age of Joshua, as the “Great Sidon