Strait of Hercules, and navigated the real ocean. After visiting Tartessus, the Peru of these ages, and probably a country of the South of Spain, he returned to Greece with such riches as awakened the avidity of other adventurers. In vain the Phenicians attempted to check the navigation of the Greeks; the latter appear even to have procured some of the charts that guided the Phenician vessels, and Anaximander, a Milesian, first published a map of the World. Still, however, the various cosmographies were equally far from the truth, thus Anaximander compared the earth to a cylinder, Leucippus to a drum, Heraclitus to a boat, while others gave it a cubic form, and Xenophon and Anixamenes conceived it to be a vast mountain whose base extended to infinity, and of which the heavenly bodies illuminated all the different parts by revolving round it. B. C. 474. Herodotus was the first who, rejecting the geo-Geography of graphical fables of his time, put faith only in what A. M. 350. he saw himself or learned from ocular witnesses. In his long voyages and journeys, he visited the Greek colonies of the Euxine from the Bosphorus to the Phasis. Destitute however of astronomical and geometrical bases, while he felt that his own discoveries and knowledge did not at all agree with the generally received ideas, he was unable to combine them into a system, and although he rallies Homer's Ocean River, which he says he could never find, and his Orbis Terrarum of which he could discover no trace, nevertheless when he attempts to give general ideas of the earth, he falls into VOL. I. H the Voyages of the Carthagi 9500-3600 B.C.500-400 the Homeric system in spite of himself. He hesitatingly admits three parts of the world, but Europe separated, according to him, from Asia, by the rivers Phasis and Araxes and by the Caspian Sea, he supposes larger than Asia and Lybia taken toge ther. As to Asia, he believed that a fleet sent by Darius circumnavigated it from the Indus to the confines of Egypt, while with regard to Africa, he was unacquainted with any point between Carthage and the pillars of Hercules. On the East coast, he was well acquainted with the shores of the Arabian gulf, but makes this continent terminate considerably North of the Equator. He has also preserved to us the traditionary relation of an apocryphal voyage of the Phenicians round Africa, which still divides the opinion of geographers(D). With respect to the North of Europe, Herodotus knew that the Phenician colony of Gadez received tin and amber from these regions, but could not fix the position of the isles Cassiterides, from whence came the first of these objects, and was still more ignorant of the proper country of the second. From the Greeks we turn to the Carthaginians, nian, the descendants of the Phenicians, and the inhe ritors of their naval and commercial spirit. The situation of Carthage eminently fitted her for an extensive commerce by sea, and from her navigators, maritime geography received considerable extension. The voyage of Hanno, supposed to be performed about the time of Herodotus, had for its object the the foundation of Carthaginian colonies on the coast of Lybia beyond the pillars of Hercules, for which purpose he sailed from Carthage with a fleet of sixty vessels, each rowed by fifty oars, and escorting a convoy with thirty thousand persons of both sexes. Geographers differ with respect to the extent of Hanno's navigation on the coast of Africa, some limiting it to Cape Nun and others extending it to Cape Threepoints on the coast of Guinea. In the same century, Hamilcar, after a voyage of Ham ilcar. of four months to the North, arrived at the isles Oystrymnides, probably Scilly, and on the coast of Albion. It also seems probable, that the Car thaginians had, even earlier, discovered the Canaries, for Diodorus mentions a large romantic and distant island to which this people resolved to remove the seat of their government in the event of any irreparable disaster. Aristotle also speaks of an island, the beauty of which had drawn to it such numbers of the Carthaginians, that the Senate forbade any farther emigration on pain of death. Plato. These vague ideas of a fertile isle of the ocean, Atlantides of were circulated in Egypt, from whence Plato' transported them to Greece, and cloathing them' in his own poetic language, out of them created his celebrated Atlantic Island, "the most beautiful and fertile country of the universe, producing abundance of corn and fruits of the most exquisite flavour, containing immense forests, vast pasturés, mines of various metals, hot and mineral H 2 springs, Its political govern springs, in short, every thing necessary to the wants or pleasures of life. ment was admirable, being governed by ten sovereigns, all descended from Neptune, and who, though independent of each other, all lived in harmony; its commerce was flourishing, and it contained several large cities with a great number of towns and rich and populous villages. Its ports were crowded with foreign vessels, and its arsenals filled with materials for the construction and equipment of fleets. Neptune, who was the father, legislator, and god of the Atlantides, had here a temple a stade in length, covered with silver and ivory, and which contained a golden statue of the god, the height of the temple. The descendants of Neptune reigned over the island 9000 years, and extended their conquests over all Lybia to Egypt, and over Europe to Tyrrhenia, their incursions even extending to Greece, but here they were repelled by the Athenians. At length this warlike nation after having rendered its name celebrated throughout the world, suddenly disappeared, an inundation, caused by an earthquake, submerging the whole island in a night and a day." Such is the story of the Atlantic island left us by the Athenian philosopher, in which some moderns pretend to see the discovery of America by the Carthaginians, while others believing the tale literally have sought to demonstrate the probability of its sudden disappearance in the manner related. Scylax, A.M. 9560. B. C. 444. While the Greeks of Athens were transforming Itinerary of into romance the voyages of the Carthaginians, other Greeks were pursuing the steps of these hardy navigators. About the time of the Peloponnesian war, Scylax collected the itineraries of the navigators of his time, and what has been preserved of the collection contains the coasts of the Palus Mæotis, the Euxine, the Archipelago, the Adriatic, and all the Mediterranean with the West coast of Africa as far as the isle of Cerné of Hanno, or Fedalle, according to Gosselin. Beyond this, says the Greek, the sea is not navigable on account of the thick herbs with which it is covered.* Half a century after, Eudoxus of Cnide first applied geographical observations to astronomy; and about the same time Aristotle inferred the spheri- Aristotle, city of the earth from the observations of travel- B. C. 404. lers, that the stars seen in Greece were not visible in Cyprus or Egypt. supposed the coasts of from those of India; he describes the habitable earth as a great oval island surrounded by the ocean, terminated on the West by the river Tartessus (probably the Guadalquivir), on the East by the Indus, and on the North by Albion and Ierne, of which islands, however, his ideas were very vague and incorrect. The same philosopher A. M. 3600. Voyage of A. M. 3660. The voyage of Pytheas, nearly in the century Theas after Aristotle, has given rise to as great a diver- B. C. 544. sity of opinion amongst geographers as even Tar H 3 * May not this allude to the fucus natnus or gulf-weed? shish |