ship's side and projected past the stern. With this the pilot steered, with no lighthouses to warn him off the rocks, no map to guide him, and no compass to give him directions.

When the ship reached its harbor, the men leaped out and pulled it up on the beach. They camped on shore, cooking at a bonfire and sleeping on the sand. On the voyage they must have lain on the open deck or in the hold, curled up among the cargo. It sounds like a camping party, living in the open and exploring the wilderness for the fun of the thing. Yet these were the great traders and sailors and civilizers of their time.

Ancient Peoples of the Mediterranean

The Mediterranean world which these early voyagers saw, eight, seven, six hundred years before Christ, was very different from what it is now. At the eastern end were the old and civilized nations of the world - the Egyptians in Africa, the Hebrews and the Phoenicians on the shore of Asia, the Lydians north of them, the Assyrians behind them. Still farther east was the half-known, mysterious India, and beyond that no man knew what. The Greeks, younger children of civilization, inhabited the western fringe of Asia Minor and the islands of the Ægean, as well as the mainland of Greece. But all of Europe except Greece, and all Africa except Egypt, was wilderness, inhabited by uncivilized warlike tribes.

Scythians

The Euxine Sea, that is, the Black Sea, says Herodotus, 'except for the Scythians, exhibits the most ignorant nations." Then he describes the Scythians. "They have neither cities nor fortifications, but carry their houses with them. They are all equestrian archers, living not from the cultivation of the earth but from cattle, and their dwellings are wagons." And he goes

on to tell how after a battle they made drinking cups from the skulls of their slain enemies, hanging the scalps from the bridles of their horses.

Africans

The people of Spain, and the Gauls in what is now France, were only a little less savage. The tribes of northern Africa were gentle brown people, Gauls and most of them "nomads who eat flesh and drink milk," Herodotus tells us. Of one tribe he says, "In the summer they leave their cattle on the coast and go [inland] in order to gather the fruit of the palm trees." And others of them cut their hair in strange fashion and "bedaub their bodies with vermilion."

Romans

In the middle part of Italy were the Latins, from whom later came the great Romans. These people, when the Greeks began to colonize the West, seven hundred years before Christ, were already settled farmers, raising grain and grapes, making flour and wine. They spun and wove garments of wool. There were dyers to make the cloth beautiful, and fullers to clean their robes. They had sandal makers and goldsmiths and coppersmiths and carpenters and potters. They sailed the sea and traded with their neighbors. A king ruled over them with senators to help him make the laws; and those laws were good and just. Yet these people had no alphabet, and therefore could not read nor write; had no schools; and made no beautiful buildings or statues.

To these half-civilized shores went the adventurous Greeks.

Their trading parties carried with them gold jewelry, bronze pots, brilliant cloth, wine, oil, swords such things as uncivilized people would be eager for. They made a tempting display of these goods on the shore and sent inland to invite the natives to come and buy. But.

Trading
Stations
and
Factories

barbarian people never have money, so they brought down with them whatever they had-sheep, cattle, cheeses. A good trade was made, both sides were pleased, and the Greek ship went home laden with a new cargo to be sold in the city. Another time it returned and traded again. The merchant perhaps bought a little piece of shore from the natives, put up a storehouse and stocked it with goods, and left two or three men to keep up the trade with the barbarians while the ship went to and fro.

Sometimes the natives had nothing that the Greeks wanted, but the exploring trader might find veins of metal or forests where he could cut timber. At his next visit he would bring a company of men and establish a lumber camp or a mining camp and would get natives to help in the work. Or perhaps he would find broad, fertile plains that were good for raising wheat. He would bring seed and plows and workmen and plant a crop, and during a few seasons he would teach the people of the country to till the ground. Then he would be sure of a cargo that would sell well in any city of crowded little Greece.

Colonization

If trade or industry prospered at one of these stations, it would be talked of in Greece, and people would become interested, especially men who liked novelty, or who were in trouble of some kind. "We will begin over again in a new place," these men would say. Word would go about that a company was to start out from a certain city to found a colony in such and such a place, and other people who wanted to go would flock there.

But the Greeks, although they were great travelers, were also great lovers of home. They dreaded cutting

Starting a
Colony

the ties that bound them to the place where their families had lived for generations. So before this company of colonists started, they went to the hearth of their city. For besides all other temples every Greek town had a little building with an altar, where burned always the sacred fire of the city that seemed like its very breath. A little of that holy fire the colonists took with them in their ship and carefully tended it on the voyage. And a little of the home earth from beneath the altar they took, and a priest. In the new land they spread out the handful of earth and planted the new altar upon it. Upon the altar they put the holy fire that they had brought. So the new town was born, and the people felt that she was the daughter of their old home city.

Extent of
Greek
Coloniza-
tion

In this way hundreds of colonies were formed all around the edges of the Mediterranean. One city alone, Miletus in Asia Minor, was the mother of eighty towns, most of which were on the Black Sea. On the shores where once the Argonauts had found the Golden Fleece, Greek miners collected gold from the rivers and dug it from mines. In the mountains they found iron and cut timber.

On the level plains that border the sea at the north and west they grew wheat. Odessa, a Russian city of to-day and one of the greatest wheat markets of the world, is named after one of those old Greek colonies planted in the wheat region. The native Scythians about this district were shepherd people, and they traded beeves and hides and wool for armor and golden ornaments. To-day people are digging for the graves of these ancient barbarians, and they find in them, hundreds of miles from Greece though they are, beautiful Greek cups and necklaces and bracelets.