Note 460 — Chapter VIII · —Coast Peoples

Coast-dwelling peoples exhibit every degree of intimacy with the water, from the amphibian life of many Malay tribes who love the wash of the waves beneath their pile-built villages, to the Nama Bushmen who inhabit the dune-walled coast of Southwest Africa, and know nothing of the sea. In the resulting nautical development the natural talents and habits of the people are of immense influence; but these in turn have been largely determined by the geographical environment of their previous habitat, whether inland or coastal, and by the duration in time, as well as the degree and necessity, of their contact with the sea. The Phoenicians, who, according to their traditions as variously interpreted, came to the coast of Lebanon either from the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea,460 brought to their favorable maritime location a different endowment from that of the land-trading Philistines, who moved up from the south to occupy the sand-choked shores of Palestine,461 or from that of the Jews, bred to the grasslands of Mesopotamia and the gardens of Judea, who only at rare periods in their history forced their way to the sea.462 The unindented coast stretching from Cape Carmel south to the Nile delta never produced a maritime people and never achieved maritime importance, till a race of experienced mariners like the Greeks planted their colonies and built their harbor moles on the shores of Sharon and Philistia.463 So on the west face of Africa, from the Senegal southward along the whole Guinea Coast to Benguela, all evidences of kinship and tradition among the local tribes point to an origin on the interior plains and a recent migration seaward,464 so that no previous schooling enabled them to exploit the numerous harbors along this littoral, as did later the sea-bred Portuguese and English.