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The count of Castagnera, who had an express order from the king, to make a large provision for Father Xavier, was very urgent with him, and importuned him so strongly to take something, for fear, said he, of tempting Providence, which does not every day work miracles, that Xavier, not to appear either obstinate or, presumptuous, demanded some few little books of devotion, for which he foresaw he should have occasion in the Indies, and a thick eloth habit against the excessive colds, which are to be endured in doubling the Cape.
And king Solomon made a navy of ships in Eziongeber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red sea, in the land of Edom. And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to king Solomon.
And they departed not from the commandment of the king unto the priests and Levites concerning any matter, or concerning the treasures. Now all the work of Solomon was prepared unto the day of the foundation of the house of the LORD, and until it was finished. So the house of the LORD was perfected. Then went Solomon to Eziongeber, and to Eloth, at the sea side in the land of Edom.
And they brought him upon horses, and buried him with his fathers in the city of Judah. Then all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king in the room of his father Amaziah. He built Eloth, and restored it to Judah, after that the king slept with his fathers. Sixteen years old was Uzziah when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty and two years in Jerusalem.
Eloth and Ezion-Geber both places situated in the inner recess of the Elanitic Gulf, or Gulf of Akaba, the more eastern of the two arms into which the Red Sea divides. David's conquest of Edom had put these ports into the possession of the Israelites, and the friendship between Hiram and Solomon had given the Phoenicians free access to them.
Moreover, the king built many ships in the Egyptian Bay of the Red Sea, in a certain place called Ezion-geber: it is now called Berenice, and is not far from the city Eloth.
Solomon, doubtless by the assistance of shipwrights furnished to him from Tyre, "made a navy of ships at Ezion-Geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom," and the sailors of the two nations conjointly manned the ships, and performed the voyage to Ophir, whence they brought gold, and "great plenty of almug-trees," and precious stones.
The sea-coast with its harbours was in the hands of the Phoenicians and the Philistines, and though the Philistines at one time owned an unwilling allegiance to the Jewish king, the Phoenicians preserved their independence, and even Solomon had to find harbours for his merchantmen, not on the coast of his own native kingdom, but in the distant Edomite ports of Eloth and Ezion-geber, in the Gulf of Aqabah.
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