These vessels spent a complete year in their voyage, that is, sailed one year, sojourned another, and did not return till the third.

This tediousness was owing first to their cruising from port to port, as they do at present; secondly, to their being detained by the Monsoon currents; and thirdly, because, according to the calculations of Pliny and Strabo, it was the ordinary practice among the ancients to spend three years in a voyage of twelve hundred leagues.

Such a commerce must have been very expensive, particularly as they were obliged to carry with them their provisions, and even fresh water.

For this reason Solomon made himself master of Palmyra, which was at that time inhabited, and was already the magazine and high road of merchants by the way of the Euphrates.

This conquest brought Solomon much nearer to the country of gold and pearls.