coast road "traverses another pass, where the mountain, descending to
the water, has been cut to admit it."[162] Still further north, between
Byblus and Tripolis, the bold promontory known to the ancients as
Theu-prosopon, and now called the Ras-esh-Shakkah, is still unconquered,
and the road has to quit the shore and make its way over the spur by
a "wearisome ascent"[163] at some distance inland. Again, "beyond the
Tamyras the hills press closely on the sea,"[164] and there is "a rocky
and difficult pass, along which the path is cut for some distance in the
rock."[165]

The effect of this conformation of the country was, in early times, to
render Phoenicia untraversable by a hostile army, and at the same time
to interpose enormous difficulties in the way of land communication
among the natives themselves, who must have soon turned their thoughts
to the possibility of communicating by sea. The various "staircases"
were painful and difficult to climb, they gave no passage to animals,
and only light forms of merchandise could be conveyed by them. As
soon as the first rude canoe put forth upon the placid waters of the
Mediterranean, it must have become evident that the saving in time and
labour would be great if the sea were made to supersede the land as the
ordinary line of communication.

The main characteristics of the country were, besides its
inaccessibility, its picturesqueness and its productiveness. The former
of these two qualities seems to have possessed but little attraction for
man in his primitive condition. Beauties of nature are rarely sung of
by early poets; and it appears to require an educated eye to appreciate
them. But productiveness is a quality the advantages of which can be
perceived by all. The eyes which first looked down from the ridge of
Bargylus or Lebanon upon the well-watered, well-wooded, and evidently