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Fx thé Commercial and Agricultural Magazine. "THE BRITISH MERCHANT. NUMBER IV,

Bliflory of the CommeRce of the Ancient Phrygians, Greeks Carthaginians, Italians, and Spaniards.

HE Egyptians, Sidonians, and T'yrians, firſt diffuſed the germs of civilization, the ſkill of navigation, the ſpirit of commercial enterprize, around the northern and the ſouthern ſhores of the Mediterranean ſea, as well as throughout the Iſles which are ſcattered over its boſom.

The coaſté of Phrygia, the ſhores of the Euxine, the Iſles of the Ægean Archipelago, appear to have been the ſcenes on which the navigation of the T yrians, created the firſt flouriſhing, colonial ſettlements of induſtry and trafflc. A number of petty towns and principalities aroſe on theſe Iſles, and at the bottoms of the bays, at the mouths of the rivers, and on the promon- tories, of the adjacent continental coaſts. Theſe communities were compoſed of a rningled race of men; partly, ſtrangers from the ſouth-eaſt coaſts of the Mediterranean fea; in part, the offspring of a ruder face who had before paſſed, chiefly by land, into the regions of Aſia Minor, Thrace, and Greece, and thence, by various adventures, into the Ægean Iſles. All theſe petty communities were of a kindred chara@er and' congenial manners. Their language,—at firſt an aſſemblage of different barbarous- idioms, and, in ſome reſpects, not unlike to that Lingua Franca, wrhich’the merchants of Europe now ſpeak in the ſame places,—aîſumed, by degrees, a ſort of homogeneous conſiſtency, in which its parts, putting of their original incon- gruity, coaleſced into one whole. They ſubſiſted, by cultivating corn and. vines, by feeding domeſticated animals, by praiſing certain arts of Tyrian origin, by hazarding their lives in occa- ſional fiſhings,‘and by expeditions of navigation, which often degenerated into piracy. They learned to ſail around the ſhores of the Euxine and the Mediterranean feas. They viſited, in particular, Egypt, Sidon, Tyre, and Cyprus; exporting the raw materials which their own ícenes of habitation produced; and in return importing thoſe manufa@Qured commodities which the merchants of Tyre had taught them to value. Conteſts perpetually arofe among them. Thoſe whom the laws gf | hoſpitality and the authority of religion did not unite, were | almoſt always foes. While the arts of the ſhepherd and the huſbandman were ſcarcely known, that navigation which con- veyed the mariner to. richer ſhores, was eſteemed the hap- pieſt of all modes of life. Aſia‘in its middle parts, adjacent to the Mediterranean ſea, as well as in its more ſouthern rez gians, exhibited much more of wealth and cultivation, than vas