LOST LAND

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 27 August 1927, Page 11

LOST LAND

MYSTERY OF OPHIR

A BRITISH naval officer’s account of liis 20 years’ search for the lost lands of Ophir, and of his discovery of them 400 miles east of Aden, after a 15-months’ cruise in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, formed the subject of a fascinating lecture at the Royal United Service Institution.

The whereabouts of Ophir, from which Biikis, the Queen of Sheba, brought to Solomon her magnificent gift of incense, spices, gold, jewels, apes, peacocks, pearls of price, and almug trees, has been one of the mysteries of the ages, but Commander C. Crauford claims that it has been solved, and he revealed his secret in his lecture. He said: —

“If Ophir is lost to modern geography, the loss is not due to lack of information. After 20 years’ search I had the good fortune to visit Ophir. I found it exactly where it ought to be — in Arabia—and it lias taken me another seven years or so to furnish proofs of the 'identity of Ophir.” Ophir has neon declared 1o be in various parts of the world. Commander Crauford said he began his search in China, and proceeded to Africa, South 1 America and Ceylon, but ho found the first due in the Rod Sen. He continued: “The problem of Ophir was the problem of finding a land where all the things which comprised the Queen of Sheba’s great gift to Solomon could be obtained.

“When the queen arrived in Solomon’s country with her .‘l.°> tons of gold, jewels, and the like. King Hiram, who was friendly with Solomon, was given the task of looking over the merchandise. In doing so he noted the wholesale markets, and used a sailor’s knowledge, which I followed.

“He planned a trading scheme that the mercantile marine of to-day could not better, and it was by following his route in a dhow (a single-masted ship of about 200 tons), the same type of craft as he used, that we found the lost lands of Ophir. “Hiram’s fleet traded all the way from Ezion Ctebir (at the head of the Hod Sea), across the ocean to Socotra Island, then on to Ceylon, back to the Persian Gulf, and along the east coast of Arabia. They traded all the way, and returned to Ezion Gebir in three years. “By studying the ships from before the Flood to the present day we found that the ship.s of Ezion Gebir were

BRITISH OFFICER’S SEARCH.

identical with the modern Red Sea dhow. So we got a dhow and set out before the same trade winds as Hiram utilised to take him upon this greatest of all trading routes. “During our voyage down the Red Sea we passed many a harbour that is hardly known to modern navigation, past Aden, or Eden, the land of pleasantness, where the Queen of Sheba stopped on her journey to Solomon’s lands, and on to the Sheba Islands. Here we waited, as Hiram did, for the second monsoon wind, which took us up to the Persian Gulf.

“With the third monsoon we coasted back, passed Muscat and Ras el Hadd, and along the coast of Oman (Southeast Arabia). As we worked southwards Sabaean traces —that is, of the kingdom of Sheba —grew stronger, and inscriptions were plentiful. Then we came to Ophir, 4flo miles east of Aden, with its ruined temple of God. This was about half-way on our cruise. Many a seaman and many a political officer have visited that ancient fort, but they merely saw a litter of massive ruins. Digging is sometimes weary work, but you are richly repaid if you find a jewel like Ophir. “The city is ideally situated. It has a harbour to the north, and it has a river which gave wharfage to the seaport. But a thin ribbon of coral sand is drawn across the harbour mouth. It was this strip of sand which strangled the life of Ophir.

“There is great wealth in Ophir still. Palestine at the present time is the Palestine of King Haul, and it lies in our power to develop the land to the prosperity of Solomon. There are gold mines and precious stones in the ground. There is a veritable Transvaal there. With the help of the Ophir land we may have a Palestine that includes all Arabia and also the extended kingdom of Sabaea, and then we shall see the fulfilment of the dreams of the two greatest rulers in history— Solomon the Wise, and Bilkis, the beautiful queen of Sheba.’’ In recent years !t Jins been a favourite theory that Ophir was situated in East Africa, and this view was popularised by the works of Theodore Bent and others, including Rider Haggard in his “King Solomon’s Mines.” The centre of speculation was a group of ruins at Zimbabwe, in Mashonaland, but siccntific researches showed that, the ruins were magnified kraals, not more than 300 or 400 years old.