chance,
even the realms of some potentate accustomed to make footstools of
princes with stiffer necks than haughty Xerxes or the terrible Tarn
burlane.
Amid
the drift of such cloudy conceits there was one more clearly shaped and
persistent than the rest. Somewhere below the equator, in the unknown
expanse of Africa, tradition placed the home of the Queen of Sheba,
King Solomon's mines, and the marvels of Ophir. Every adventurer
skirting the South African coast hoped to touch with certainty the
shore of this delectable country. The alluring recital in Kings and
Chronicles glittered before his eyes.1 In fancy he saw the
gathering of the ships in " Ezion-Geber, which is beside Eloth on the
shore of the Red Sea," and how this fleet ca.me to Ophir and fetched
from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to
King Solomon. He saw, too, the coming of the Queen of Sheba to the king
to prove him with hard questions, and the great train that followed her
with camels that bare spices and very much gold and precious stones.
Then it was told him how the queen was overcome by Solomon's wisdom and
grandeur until " there was no more spirit in her," and she gave the
king one hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great
store, and precious stones. Following this tribute came the regular
flow, from Ophir to Judea, of gold and gems and almug trees in the
transports of Tyre. With such a fountain of supply, it was easy to
credit the wonderful tale of the targets and shields of beaten gold, of
the throne of ivory overlaid with gold, and of all the other displays
of Solomon's splendor. If the king's gold made silver to be in
Jerusalem as stones in the eyes of the chronicler, it is not surprising
that this vision came down undimmed to the days of Da Gama.
But
how to find the source of this flow was the puzzle that faced the
explorer. Unfortunately the old chroniclers had omitted to give any
landmarks of King Solomon's mines. Surmise strayed down the eastern
coast of Africa, and the close commercial connection between
southwestern Arabia and the
11 Kings ix., x; 2 Chronicles viii., ix.
