fires ofwhose volcanoes it may be supposed to be heated), cuts the beforementioned isle of St. James, or whether there may not be yet another circumstance which may give the monster the name of κυκλωψ, from κύκλος; and whether the massive stones, or rather tops of mountains, which the Cyclops throws at Ulysses (481), xe d'aдoρиkas κορυφήν ορεος μεγαλοιο, are to be considered as being referable to the eruptions of those volcanoes; I do not now enter into an inquiry, as not intending here to give a detailed explanation of the story of the Cyclops, it being of the nature of those subjects which I have reserved for another occasion. Suffice it now to observe, that a fable, upon the same plan and basis, and liable to a similar explication, with that of the Cyclops, has a place among the Arabian Tales, which may tend, in one instance at least, to confirm what is said in the Introduction, relative to the poetical or enigmatical light in which those Tales are to be understood.

There is one circumstance, however, introduced

by Homer, in the fable of the Cyclops, which

I cannot omit to notice here: 196

Αιγεον ασκον έχον μέλανος οινοιο

Ηδεος, ον μοι έδωκε Μάρων Ευανθεος υιος
Ιρευς Απολλωνος ος Ισμαρον αμφιβέβηκει

with which the following passage may be compared, 208,

Τον δ' οτε τσίνοιεν μελιηδέα οινον ερυθρου

Εν δέπας εμπλησας ύδατος ανα εικοσι μέτρα
Χευ' οδμη δ' ηδεί απο κρητηρος οδώδει
Θεσπεσίη, τοτ' αν' στοι αποισχεσθαι φίλον μεν
Το Φερον εμπλησας ασκον μέγαν, εν δε και μια
Κωρύκω.

It seems to me to be free from doubt that the liquor alluded to in these passages was no other than rum: the colour of it (μελανος) refers to the dark colour of the melasses, of which rum is made; or as it is afterwards called αίθοπα οίνον, it may allude to the negroes who make it: its sweetness, its great strength (which furnishes a proof of the knowledge the ancients had of the art of distillation), its fragrant scent, all serve to shew it to have

been that liquor. To this it may be added, that the word Mapov (197) has not only an allusion to the chesnut-coloured aborigines of the West India islands, sometimes called Maroons; but by its last syllable (and the same thing may be implied by those of Iouagov and ɛgulgov) it seems to have an oblique reference to the name of rum itself; while Evavdeos, from avlos flos, may be referable to Cape Florida, and aonov μɛɣav, to the name of the Island of Jamaica itself; while from the poet's concluding the passage with the words

εν δε και για Κωρύκω

it seems to have been his intention to allude to and include the Bermuda islands in the number of the sugar islands yielding rum; it being well known that the Bermuda islands, collectively taken, exhibit the resemblance of a shepherd's grook, κωρύκω.

But, besides general accounts of America, there are in Homer many descriptions of that vast continent that descend to the minutest particulars.

The part which I shall first notice is the island of Newfoundland, with its great fishing bank; and they are both most happily represented in the lines that follow the 146th of the 10th Odyssey, under the figure of a large elk, the island itself in fact resembling the head of such an animal, and the extensive fishing bank, its wide-spreading horns, as together drawn in

Fig. 175.

The word weewи (146), which means round

the

eye, with reference perhaps to the eye of the Cyclops, refers to Baffin's and Hudson's Bays, constituting a gulf, which is the σTEOs arxi baλacons, mentioned in the 102d line, near the entrance of which the island of Newfoundland

lies. The elk's drinking at the river, refers to the mouth of the geographical figure of that animal coming down to the straits of Belle Isle, through which straits the river St. Laurence in part finds its way to the sea and among the lines referred to, may be seen a poetical account of the mode of curing fish on the banks of Newfoundland, the word novo being referable to the salt reduced to κονίησι dust or small particles, used for that purpose. The very name of the fish, the cod, appears disguised in the words καδδ' επεσεν κονίησι, and (by a repetition which I have frequently observed upon,) the same thing had been before noticed by add' baλev, of the 172d line, as it had been by the same words in the 9th Odyssey, 482. The intense fogs, which prevail off those banks, seem to be metaphorically noticed by xavos and alожа naπvoν, in the 149th and 152d lines of the 10th Od. and again in the 196th, where the plain low level of the banks is marked by the word χθαμαλή

Αυτη δε χθαμαλη κειται καπνου δ' ενι μεσση