aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

200 AROUND THE WORLD.
lucrative trade in the time of Solomon, twenty-eight hundred
years since. At this period the Jews were unacquainted
with iron, knowing only bronze, silver, and gold. Their
bronze they received from the Tyrians. Half barbarous, they
had no commerce till David conquered Edom (or Idumea),
giving them some coast on the Red Sea. The Jewish crafts
that traded with Ophir may have been the " navy of Tarshish
;
" and this Tarshish may have been a Tyrian port on
the Red Sea,— the part known, perhaps, as the Gulf of Suez.
The celebrated German Orientalist, Lassen, places Ophir
somewhere about the debouchement of the river Indus.
His theory is founded upon resemblances between the Hebrew
and Sanscrit names of the commodities brought from
Ophir. There is no resemblance, however, between the
ancient method of working the Ophir mines, and the copper
mines bordering Lake Superior — worked by whom ? The
mound-builders. But who were the mound-builders ?