from their ignorance of the ways of savage man, and a want of those
tremendous weapons of attack and defence with which modern explorers
take care to provide themselves. Until the invention of gunpowder,
the arms of civilised men--swords, and spears, and javelins, and
the like--were scarcely a match for the cunningly devised
weapons--boomerangs, and blow-pipes, and poisoned arrows, and
lassoes[318]--of the savage.

The adaptability and pliability of the Phoenicians was especially shown
in their power of obtaining the favourable regard of almost all the
peoples and nations with which they came into contact, whether civilised
or uncivilised. It is most remarkable that the Egyptians, intolerant as
they usually were of strangers, should have allowed the Phoenicians to
settle in their southern capital, Memphis, and to build a temple and
inhabit a quarter there.[319] It is also curious and interesting that
the Phoenicians should have been able to ingratiate themselves with
another most exclusive and self-sufficing people, viz. the Jews.
Hiram's friendly dealings with David and Solomon are well known; but
the _continued_ alliance between the Phoenicians and the Israelites has
attracted less attention. Solomon took wives from Phoenicia;[320]
Ahab married the daughter of Ithobalus, king of Sidon;[321] Phoenicia
furnished timber for the second Temple;[322] Isaiah wound up his
prophecy against Tyre with a consolation;[323] our Lord found faith in
the Syro-Phoenician woman;[324] in the days of Herod Agrippa, Tyre
and Sidon still desired peace with Judæa, "because their country was
nourished by the king's country."[325] And similarly Tyre had friendly
relations with Syria and Greece, with Mesopotamia and Assyria, with
Babylonia and Chaldæa. At the same time she could bend herself to meet
the wants and gain the confidence of all the varieties of barbarians,
the rude Armenians, the wild Arabs, the barbarous tribes of northern