by the Phœnicians, B.C. 610-594.
- rally, far south of the Cape Verde Islands; but some
of the statements preserved in their writings are too definite to have been the mere creation of imagination. We shall, therefore, briefly examine these assertions. To take first the account in Herodotus,[1] of the famous voyage undertaken by the orders of Pharaoh Necho. His words are: "As for Libya, we know it to be washed on all sides by the sea, except where it is attached to Asia. This discovery was first made by Necho, the Egyptian king, who, on desisting from the canal he had begun between the Nile and the Arabian Gulf, sent to sea a number of ships manned by Phœnicians, with orders to make for the Pillars of Hercules, and return to Egypt through them, and by the Northern sea (the Mediterranean). The Phœnicians took their departure from Egypt by the way of the Erythræan sea, and so sailed into the Southern ocean. When autumn came they went ashore wherever they might happen to be, and, having sown a tract of land with corn, waited until the grain was fit to cut. Having reaped it, they set sail again; and thus it came to pass that two whole years went by, and it was not till the third year that they doubled the Pillars of Hercules, and made good their voyage home. On their return, they declared—I for my part do not believe them, but perhaps others may—that in sailing round Libya, they had the sun on their right hand."
But what Herodotus disbelieved, from ignorance of the principles of spherical geography, affords the strongest confirmation of the report of the Phœnician mariners; for, in sailing westwards, south of the line,
- ↑ Herod. iv. c. 42.
