United States or Guam ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At times they talked of making their way to a seaport, seizing a small craft, and setting sail in her; but none of them knew aught of navigation, and the task of traversing the Mediterranean, passing through the Pillars of Hercules, and navigating the stormy seas beyond until they reached Britain, would have been impossible for them.
There is much reason to believe that if any portion of the squadron heretofore stationed in the Mediterranean should be withdrawn our intercourse with the powers bordering on that sea would be much interrupted, if not altogether destroyed.
And the Powers also agreed that it should have commercial rights on the Mediterranean, thorough railroad connection with Salonica. As regards Turkey's shrewd advantage of the opportunity to retake Adrianople, it proved a successful move.
It must have seemed so to followers of Mahomet, when the crescent knew no pause in its march up the Arabian peninsula to the Bosporus, to India, along the Mediterranean shores to Spain, where in the eighth century it flowered into a culture, a learning, a refinement in art and manners, to which the Christian world of that day was a stranger.
It would be impossible to give an account of all the minor adventures I met with in the Mediterranean; but such as I can I will narrate. Captain Poynder was very anxious to make his midshipmen gentlemen, and to give us a knowledge of polite literature, as well as to instruct us in navigation and seamanship. Accordingly he got a Maltese on board to teach us Italian.
To facilitate the commerce which was carried on by this route, Solomon is supposed to have built Tadmor in the wilderness, or Palmyra: the situation of this place, which, though in the midst of barren sands, is plentifully supplied with water, and has immediately round it a fertile soil, was peculiarly favorable; as it was only 85 miles from the Euphrates, and about 117 from the nearest part of the Mediterranean.
It makes old Ulysses look like a very stay-at-home, for his farthest travels never went beyond the blue Mediterranean, and his whole twenty years of voyaging covered less than the states east of the Mississippi much less than our Red Wanderer covers in a single summer. The Bells of the Solomon Seal Let us go out into the woods, and look for the Solomon Seal.
Many a time "the little friend of Baptistin" had the hooded cloak of the Mediterranean sailor thrown over him by their honest hands while dodging at night under the lee of Chateau d'If on the watch for the lights of ships.
A dowry of £500,000 was promised with the Portuguese Princess no ineffective bait for one whose coffers were so ill-supplied as those of Charles. The port of Tangier, which could easily be made into an effective harbour and seemed likely to offer a command of the Mediterranean trade, was to be placed in the hands of England.
Later, as we shall see, a second invasion of Mohammedans, the Turks, ably assisted by the descendants of the Arabs who conquered Spain, once more threatened to control the Mediterranean for the cause of Islam. But the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, which fell into the hands of the Arabs as soon as they took to the water, remained in Arab hands down to the times of the Portuguese.
Word Of The Day