Chapter XVI. Lands of Legend

There are countries whose boundaries have not been fixed by armies or treaties, nor their ways marked out by trade. The dreams of men have made them. Their substance is reality, yet their effect is vision. By a sort of conspiracy of wish, to which men of imaginative mind have been parties and all others have yielded assent, these countries have been supposed to be different from what any was or could be. It has been easy enough to create the illusion, for one’s view of another land is always more or less a symbolic drawing.

_Ophir_

The geographical table in the tenth chapter of Genesis tells a straight tale which men debated for something more than two thousand years and only in the present century have accepted at its face value. In one phrase the Scriptures link Ophir and Havilah, and then add that “their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar, a mount of the East.” Where was Ophir? Perhaps the learned men of Alexandria were the first to ask the question. What was Ophir? This question nobody thought of putting, and it was vital.

Ophir was a magic word which let no man rest once he had heard it. The spell of gold was in it. Even as they wrote, it seemed to intoxicate the Jewish prophets, poets, and chroniclers. Isaiah speaks of the “golden wedge of Ophir.” It is said of wisdom in the Book of Job that it cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx or the sapphire. “Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust, and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks,” says another passage Oriental in its opulence of suggestion.

From Ophir came the fleet of Solomon and Hiram of Tyre, fetching gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and sandalwood. The arrival of the treasure fleet is associated in the narrative, for some reason one may only guess, with the coming to Jerusalem of the Queen of Sheba. The two incidents constitute the most gorgeous episode in Jewish history.

Sheba’s queen comes to visit Solomon with a very great train, with camels that bear spices, and very much gold and precious stones. She sees the meat of his table, the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers. She proves him with hard questions, and pride dies in her. The report she has heard in her own land of his wealth and wisdom was a true report, she declares, but the half had not been told. Then she goes back, and her camels take across the deserts gifts richer than they had brought. Gold of Ophir travels north, and south again, and legend follows it.

Two other place-names appear on this piece of Hebrew brocade. One is Ezion-geber, Solomon’s port on the Red Sea in the land of Edom. The other is Tharshish, where the king had ships. Once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory and apes and peacocks. There was nothing in these imports that one might eat or drink or use for shelter or raiment. The commodities were typical of ancient commerce in their magnificence, their vain show, and their uselessness--and the cargo has freighted the imagination of men ever since. There was contraband in the ships of Tharshish. Among the elephants’ teeth and peacocks was stowed away the spirit of the East.

Where was Tharshish? Where was Ophir? Where was Havilah, mentioned rarely, but in a significant context?

It was long thought that Tharshish was the Carthaginian port of Tartessus beyond the Pillars, where now is the Spanish port of Cadiz. But Spain had few apes, little gold, and no ivory. The text of Genesis seemed to point to the Arabian coast as the seat of Ophir. But Araby had no elephants and its gold came from elsewhere. Ophir was sought also in the African spiceland of Punt, in the Midian country of northern Arabia, and at the mouth of the Indus in Hindostan. Once in every three years came the fleet, so said the text; and into this was read the meaning, not of periodic sailings, but of voyages that covered three years. Ophir, therefore, must lie in the far East, and men sought it in the Malay Peninsula, in that Golden Chersonese where were ivory and apes and peacocks, as well as precious metals.

For one splendid century it was Portugese instinct to advance steadily,