the bottom or hold of the vessel; and that merchant ships were built in
this manner, in order that they might carry more goods; whereas the ships
for warfare were sharp in the bottom. Of other particulars respecting the
construction and equipment of the ships of the Phoenicians, we are
ignorant: they probably resembled in most things those of Greece and Rome;
and these, of which antient historians speak more fully, will be described
afterwards.

The Phoenicians naturally paid attention to astronomy, so far at least as
might be serviceable to them in their navigation; and while other nations
were applying it merely to the purposes of agriculture and chronology, by
means of it they were guided through the "trackless ocean," in their
maritime enterprises. The Great Bear seems to have been known and used as a
guide by navigators, even before the Phoenicians were celebrated as a
sea-faring people; but this constellation affords a very imperfect and
uncertain rule for the direction of a ship's course: the extreme stars that
compose it are more than forty degrees distant from the pole, and even its
centre star is not sufficiently near it. The Phoenicians, experiencing the
imperfection of this guide, seem first to have discovered, or at least to
have applied to maritime purposes, the constellation of the Lesser Bear.
But it is probable, that at the period when they first applied this
constellation, which is supposed to be about 1250 years before Christ, they
did not fix on the star at the extremity of the tail of Ursa Minor, which
is what we call the Pole Star; for by a Memoir of the Academy of Sciences
(1733. p. 440.) it is shewn, that it would at that period be too distant to
serve the purpose of guiding their track.[3]

II. The gleanings in antient history respecting the maritime and commercial
enterprises, and the discoveries and settlements of the Egyptians, during
the very early ages, to which we are at present confining ourselves, are