CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF AFRICA. 283 track, to give information designedly false, 1 respecting dangers and difficulties, and even to drown any commercial rivals when they could do so with safety. 2 One remarkable Phenician achievement, however, contemporary with the period of PhGkrcan exploration, must not be passed over. It was somewhere about GOO B. c. that they circumnavigated Africa ; starting from the Red sea, by direction of the Egyptian king NekGs, son of Psammet- ichus, going round the cape of Good Hope to Gades, and from thence returning to the Nile. It appears that Nekos, anxious to procure a water communica- tion between the Red sea and the Mediterranean, began digging a canal from the former to the Nile, but desisted from the un- dertaking after having made considerable progress. In prosecu- tion of the same object, he despatched these Phenicians on an experimental voyage round Libya, which was successfully ac- complished, though in a time not less than three years ; for during each autumn, the mariners landed and remained on shore a sufficient time to sow their seed and raise a crop of corn. They reached Egypt again, through the strait of Gibraltar, in the course of the third year, and recounted a tale, "which (says Herodotus) others may believe if they choose, but I cannot believe," that, in sailing round Libya, they had the sun on their right hand, i. e. to the north. 3 The reality of this circumnavigation was confirmed to Herod- otus by various Carthaginian informants, 4 and he himself fully 1 The geographer Ptolemy, with genuine scientific zeal, complains bitterly of the reserve and frauds common with the old traders, respecting the coun- tries which they visited (Ptolem. Geogr. i, 11). 2 Strabo, iii, pp. 175-176 ; xvii, p. 802. 3 Herodot. iv, 42. Kai c?,eyoi>, f/wl [icv ov IUGTU, uAAo <5e dtj rt'w, ug trepi.- 7r?v6)OJ>rfC T7JV l.3vT)V, TOV Jjtf.lOV KO^OV if r " dt^lU.
- Herodot. QVTCJ fisv avrrj kyvucrdri ronpurov (i. e. rf Aifivrj kyvuvdr]
tovaa nepippv-of) perii 6e, Kapxridovioi flaw oi heyovrcf. These Cartha- ginians, to whom Herodotus here alludes, told him that Libya was circumnav- igable ; but it doss not seem that they knew of any other actual circumnavi- gation except that of the Phenicians sent by Nekos ; otherwise, Herodotus would have made some allusion to it, instead of proceeding, as he does immediately, to tell the story of the Persian Sataspes, who tried and failed. The testimony of the Carthaginians is so far valuable, as it declares their persuasion of the truth of the statement made by those Phenicians.
