Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 12, 2025
Hamilton then insisted that the papers relating to the non-execution of the treaty of peace, and to the stopping of the corn-ships, ought not to be communicated, unless in a secret message, as the matters therein discussed were still unsettled, and the tendency of the communication was to inflame the public mind against Great Britain.
Reinforced by these men and the contingents of the new burgesses, as well as by the exiles who flocked to him with their partisans from all sides, he soon numbered 6000 men under his eagles and was able to man forty ships, which took their station before the mouth of the Tiber and gave chase to the corn-ships sailing towards Rome.
These men gave them a kind reception, and, what they needed even more, food, fire and some beasts of burden for their journey. When all were gathered on the beach Caleb joined them, having handed over the galley to another Jew, who was to depart in her with those that waited on the shore, upon some secret mission of intercepting Roman corn-ships.
The Egyptian court was decidedly on the side of Rome, with which it renewed alliance in 544; but it was not to be expected of Ptolemy Philopator, that he would support otherwise than by corn-ships.
At last, in August, 1533, having appointed Hasan Aga, a Sardinian eunuch, in whom he greatly confided, to be viceroy during his absence, Kheyr-ed-dīn set sail from Algiers with a few galleys; and after doing a little business on his own account looting Elba and picking up some Genoese corn-ships pursued his way, passing Malta at a respectful distance, and coasting the Morea, till he dropped anchor in the Bay of Salonica.
Orders had been previously given to most of the allies, to the corn-ships, the smaller craft, and generally to the vessels in attendance on the armament that they should muster at Corcyra, whence the whole fleet was to strike across the Ionian Gulf to the promontory of Iapygia.
Even in Christian times, under the reign of Constantine, a certain Sopater suffered death at Constantinople on a charge of binding the winds by magic, because it happened that the corn-ships of Egypt and Syria were detained afar off by calms or head-winds, to the rage and disappointment of the hungry Byzantine rabble. Finnish wizards used to sell wind to storm-stayed mariners.
When Rome was the capital of the world, she used to get most of the corn to feed her hungry thousands from Egypt by the famous Alexandrian corn-ships; and you remember how, in the Bible story, Joseph's brethren came down from Palestine because, though there was famine there, there was "corn in Egypt." And yet Egypt is a land where rain is almost unknown.
In the meantime the Athenians were not idle. During this same winter, as they had determined, they contributed timber and pushed on their ship-building, and fortified Sunium to enable their corn-ships to round it in safety, and evacuated the fort in Laconia which they had built on their way to Sicily; while they also, for economy, cut down any other expenses that seemed unnecessary, and above all kept a careful look-out against the revolt of their confederates.
The motley crowd of foreigners, the hubbub of all dialects from the Crimea to Cadiz, the vast piles of merchandise, and heaps of wheat, lying unsheltered in that rainless air, the huge bulk of the corn-ships lading for Rome, whose tall sides rose story over story, like floating palaces, above the buildings of some inner dock these sights, and a hundred more, made the young monk think that the world did not look at first sight a thing to be despised.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking