These statements of Bruce are confirmed by what the Portuguese have reported of the state of the country when they first settled there: that the princes were pure Moors; that their form of worship was the same as that of the Arabs; and that they lived, more especially in the interior, in considerable state.
Among the learned it has been a subject of considerable dispute where the country of Ophir, abounding in gold, was situated.
After a display of great ingenuity and considerable research, in the endeavour to prove Ophir situated in Arabia, India, and even Peru, I think it will be at length allowed that Sofala, on the east coast of Africa, is indubitably the Ophir of Solomon.
“And King Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants. Solomon. And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talants, and brought it to King Solomon.”[3]
“And the navy also of Hiram, that brought gold from Ophir, brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees, and precious stones. And the King made of the almug trees pillars for the house of the Lord, and for the King’s house, harps also and psalteries for singers: there came no such almug trees, nor were seen unto this day.”[4]
“For the King had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.”[5]
Writers on this subject have endeavoured to prove that this Ophir, where Solomon obtained such immense quantities of gold, is Ofor, on the eastern side of the Arabian peninsula; and that the immense gold-field alluded to by the sacred writer is the adjoining very small extent of coast, known as the littus Hammæum ubi auri metalla, or Gold Coast, mentioned by Pliny; asserting that this was the true term of the famous voyage, undertaken in the reign of Solomon, from Ezion-geber, or Akaba, at the head of the Gulf of Elah.
That the small district referred to may have contained a small quantity of gold (as no doubt it does at present, for it is stated to be highly metalliferous), I am not going to dispute.