THE CAUSEWAY --- OLD SEA-WALL.

179

the city. To be very accurate, it is thirteen hundred and twenty-five paces CHAPTER one way, and ten hundred and thirty-six the other.

XIII.

The causeway does not "lie between the shore and the northern part of the The cause. island," and it would not have reflected much credit upon the sagacity of Alex- way ander's engineers to have carried it in that direction, because the strait is broader, and the sea deeper there than toward the south end. Alexander would, of course, build his work where there was the least depth and shortest distance. The point of the island which extended farthest toward the mainland lies directly east of the fountain nearly three hundred paces, as appears from the remains of Tyre's most ancient wall at that place. These very interesting remains were uncovered by quarriers some three years ago, but as the stones were too heavy for their purpose, they left them, and they are now nearly buried again by the shifting sand. From this point the island fell back rapidly toward the north-west, and more gradually toward the south-west. I doubt not but that Alexander's work first touched this projecting angle. The largest part of the causeway, however, lies to the south of it, and the wind from that direction has there thrown up the greatest amount of sand.

wall.

There yet remains one solitary specimen of Tyre's great sea-wall, that mighty Old seabulwark which no enemy could overthrow. At the extreme northern end of the island, a stone nearly seventeen feet long and six and a half thick, rests just where Tyrian architects placed it thousands of years ago. As in every

case that I have examined, the foundation laid for these gigantic blocks is made with stone comparatively small. When the sea is quiet we will visit this interesting portion of the old wall.

I do not believe that there ever was an available harbour south of the island. Harbour.

PART

I.

Granite columns.

Not only is the water too shallow, but the south-west and west winds render it utterly unsafe to anchor there. When, therefore, authors speak of two, I suppose they must refer to the inner harbour and outer roadstead, both of which are on the north of the island. The natives, it is true, have a tradition that there was a harbour on the south; but their story is connected with incredible fables about a wall built by Alexander through the deep sea to Ras el Baiyod, a distance of eight or ten miles!

The number of granite columns that lie in the sea, particularly on the north of the island, is surprising. The east wall of the inner harbour is entirely founded upon them, and they are thickly spread over the bottom of the sea on every side. I have often rowed leisurely around the island to look at them when the surface was perfectly calm, and always with astonishment. Tyre must have been a city of columns and temples par excellence. The whole north end appears to have been one vast colonnade.

The land along the western shore, and the entire south half of the island, is now given up to cultivation, pasturage, and the general cemetery of the town; and here are found the remains of those splendid edifices for which Tyre was celebrated. About three years ago, the quarriers who were digging out stone for the government barracks at Beirût uncovered a large hajarîyeh-floor-a few feet below the surface. Descending through rubbish some ten feet farther, they came upon a beautiful marble pavement, among confused mass of columns of every size and variety of rock. I went down and groped about amid these prostrate columns, and found the bases of some still in their original Ruins of a positions,-parts of what was once a superb temple. One fragment of verd temple. antique was particularly beautiful. In an adjoining quarry they had just turned out a marble statue of a female figure, full sized, modestly robed, and in admirable preservation. May not this be the site and the remains of the famous temple of Belus, or of Jupiter Olympus, both mentioned by Dios; or of Astarte, or Hercules, described by Menander? It is the centre and highest part of the island, and must have been very conspicuous from the sea. The mind becomes quite bewildered with the mighty revolutions and desolations which such excavations reveal. The floor above these remains is the same in kind as those now made in Tyre; but the house to which it belonged has wholly disappeared, and must have been destroyed before the city of the middle ages was built, for it is outside of the walls; and yet the ruins of this temple were then buried so deep below the surface, that the builder probably had not the slightest idea of their existence. This collection of columns and marble floors was again covered up by the quarriers in their search for available stone; and the unconscious tourist now walks heedlessly over wrecks of ancient splendour which astonished and delighted even the well-travelled "Father of History” four centuries before the birth of Christ. The entire southern half of the island is buried deep beneath just such ruins; and I hope the day is not distant when others will explore them besides poor quarriers, rummaging for building-stone at so many piastres per hundred.

Great an

tiquity.

XIII.

saders.

Should any one ask incredulously, Where are the stones of ancient Tyre?— CHAPTER where, at least, the remains of those lofty towers and triple walls which so excited the wonder and admiration of the Crusaders only some seven centuries The Tyre ago?-the preceding incidents will furnish a satisfactory reply. They are of the Crufound in this depth of ruins, spread over the island, and over the causeway of Alexander; they are found in her choked-up harbour and at the bottom of her sea. They are at Acre, and Joppa, and Beirût, and in the rubbish of all those cities. In fact, the only wonder is, that so much still remains to reveal and confirm the ancient greatness of this Phoenician capital.

Do you suppose that the fountain outside of the gate has any connection with Ras el 'Ain?

the island

The period of Tyre's greatest extent and glory was before the causeway was made, and it is not probable that an aqueduct was carried under the sea; and, besides, this fountain is not on the edge of the island nearest the mainland, as Water it would have been had such an aqueduct been constructed, but three hundred supply on paces farther west, in the interior of the original island. There is no need of such a hypothesis to explain any apparent mystery about this fountain. The strata along the coast dip toward the sea, and pass under it. Where they terminate abruptly at the shore, innumerable streams of water run out on a level with the surface and below it. There are hundreds of such streams along this coast, and some of them very large. A little north of Ruad-the Arvad of the Bible-a fountain bursts up from the bottom of the sea, of such enormous size and power during the rainy months as to make the whole surface boil like a caldron. Now, apply this to our fountain. The strata of the plain opposite the city dip under the sea at a very small angle, and, of course, pass below the island. A shaft sunk only a few feet deep will reach a stratum that extends to the mainland, and water running beneath that stratum will pass under the island. Cut off such a stream by your shaft, and the water will rise as high as the conditions of the strata on the neighbouring plain will admit. Accordingly the people will tell you that water can be found on any part of the island by digging to the proper depth. It will generally be somewhat brackish, and this is to be expected from the close proximity to the sea. These facts explain, as I believe, how it was that the Tyrians could sustain such protracted sieges, as we know from history they repeatedly did. They appear never to have been straitened for water, because they had a supply on their own little island which the besiegers could not cut off.

Have you ever seen the shell-fish from which the far-famed Tyrian purple was obtained?

That variety of the murex from which this dye was procured is found all along Tyrian this coast, but it abounds most around the Bay of Acre. So also the Helix purple. Janthina, from which a blue, with a delicate purple or lilac tinge, may be extracted, is equally abundant. After a storm in winter you may gather thousands of them from the sandy beach south of Sidon. They are so extremely fragile that the waves soon grind them to dust. A kind of Buccinum

PART

I.

Sung by
Homer.

Age of Tyre.

Josephus and Joshua,

"Palai

Tyrus."

is found here at Tyre, which has a dark crimson colouring matter about it, with a bluish livid tinge. According to ancient authors, this was used to vary the shades of the purple. Pliny says the Tyrians ground the shell in mills to get at the dye. This could not have been the only process, because the remnants of these shells found in pits along the south-eastern shore of our island were certainly broken or mashed, and not ground; and the same is true with the shells on the south of the wall at Sidon.

This Tyrian purple was celebrated in Greece even in the remote age of Homer, who sings of

"Belts,

That, rich with Tyrian dye, refulgent glowed."

The references to these colours of red, purple, and scarlet in the Bible, are more ancient still; indeed, from Genesis to Revelation they are so numerous, and so mingled and blended together, that it is almost impossible to particularize them. Nor is it necessary; the merest child can turn to a score of them. And these colours are equally prevalent and popular at the present day among all classes of Orientals.

These and other matters, which connect the history of Tyre with that of the people of God, are invested with peculiar interest; and I have long desired to become intimately and accurately acquainted with them. I encounter a difficulty at the very beginning of her story. Isaiah calls Tyre the "daughter of Sidon;' ;"1 and Joshua mentions the "strong city Tyre" in describing the boundary of Asher; 2 from which it is certain that she was not a very young daughter even at the conquest of Canaan by the Jews. Yet Josephus, in stating the exact time in which Solomon's temple was built, says there had passed two hundred and forty years from the founding of Tyre to the building of the temple; but Joshua lived more than four hundred years before Solomon. Here is a discrepancy of more than two hundred years.

There is; and it is possible that Josephus wrote four hundred and forty instead of two hundred and forty. Such errors in copying might easily occur. But Josephus lived after the beginning of the Christian era, and may have had in his mind the city that then existed, and all agree that it was built long after continental Tyre. This Palai Tyrus had been totally subverted for seven hundred years when the Jewish historian wrote, and he may have dropped it out of view entirely, and spoken only of that city concerning which the Roman world would feel interested. Insular Tyre was very likely not built more than two hundred and forty years before the time of Solomon. At any rate, the testimony of Joshua that there was a Tyre in his day is decisive; and if the statement of Josephus could in no way be reconciled with it, we should not hesitate which to believe. I understand him, however, to refer to different cities, and thus there is no contradiction.