barbarous nations? Those two cities, however, at present carry on a very considerable
commerce with each other, and by mutually affording a market, give a good deal of
encouragement to each other's industry.

Since such, therefore, are the advantages of water-carriage, it is natural that the first
improvements of art and industry should be made where this conveniency opens the whole
world for a market to the produce of every sort of labour, and that they should always be
much later in extending themselves into the inland parts of the country. The inland parts of the
country can for a long time have no other market for the greater part of their goods, but the
country which lies round about them, and separates them from the sea-coast, and the great
navigable rivers. The extent of the market, therefore, must for a long time be in proportion to
the riches and populousness of that country, and consequently their improvement must always
be posterior to the improvement of that country. In our North American colonies, the
plantations have constantly followed either the sea-coast or the banks of the navigable rivers,
and have scarce anywhere extended themselves to any considerable distance from both.

The nations that, according to the best authenticated history, appear to have been first
civilized, were those that dwelt round the coast of the Mediterranean sea. That sea, by far the
greatest inlet that is known in the world, having no tides, nor consequently any waves, except
such as are caused by the wind only, was, by the smoothness of its surface, as well as by the
multitude of its islands, and the proximity of its neighbouring shores, extremely favourable to
the infant navigation of the world; when, from their ignorance of the compass, men were
afraid to quit the view of the coast, and from the imperfection of the art of ship-building, to
abandon themselves to the boisterous waves of the ocean. To pass beyond the pillars of
Hercules, that is, to sail out of the straits of Gibraltar, was, in the ancient world, long
considered as a most wonderful and dangerous exploit of navigation. It was late before even
the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the most skilful navigators and ship-builders of those old
times, attempted it; and they were, for a long time, the only nations that did attempt it.

Of all the countries on the coast of the Mediterranean sea, Egypt seems to have been the first