ERTAINLY the Phoenicians were the greatest maritime people of antiquity, and-so far as we have any knowledge the first to traverse habitually the broad highway of the deep. They were naturally directed to a seafaring life by local position, occupying an advantageous coast-line, in possession of ample supplies of material for ship-building from the forests of Lebanon, while an outlet was required for the products of Asia, continually accumulating in their cities. They explored the shores of the Mediterranean, and crept along the Atlantic coast of Europe; planted settlements in Crete, Cyprus, Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, Northern Africa, and Southern Spain; conveyed the commodities of the east, with their own manufactures, to these colonies; returned with their peculiar products; and not only commanded for ages the carrying trade of the western waters, but aspired

FIRST AFRICAN COLONISTS.

11 to wrest that of the Indian Ocean out of the hands of the Arabians. The attempt to effect this was made by Hiram, king of Tyre, in conjunction with the Hebrew monarch, Solomon; for neither party was competent to undertake it independently. The latter had command of ports in the land of Edom, communicating through the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean, but he had no seamen, ships, shipwrights, or timber. The former could furnish them in abundance, but had no access to a southern sea-board without permission from his neighbour. Both therefore confederated to fit out a Hebrew-Phoenician fleet, which made the celebrated voyages to Ophir, starting from the northern extremity of the Red Sea, and bringing back gold, ivory, ebony, precious stones, apes, and peacocks.

The situation of Ophir has given rise to much learned research and ingenious speculation. The opinion is, however, very probable, that the name denotes no particular spot, but only a certain region or part of the world, analogous to the East and West Indies of modern geography. It may therefore be understood as a general term for the rich countries of the south, lying on the African, Arabian, and Indian coasts, as far as they were at that time known. The vessels are styled ships of Tarshish, which may mean ships of a certain size and build, similar to those which traded to the Phoenician colony of Tartessus in Spain. They returned once every three years. It is not necessarily implied that they were absent the whole period, for as broken years were reckoned by the Hebrews as whole ones, the actual time of the outward and homeward voyage would not be more than eighteen months, supposing the fleet to have sailed in the autumn of one year, staying out the next, and returning in the spring of the third. But even this length of time sufficiently shews the slowness of ancient navigation, owing to seamen proceeding coast-wise, frequently landing for provisions, and seeking a harbour on the appearance of every storm. Solomon's successors lost all direct communication with the Indian Ocean, being driven from the countries of the Red Sea during the civil wars which followed his death; and the monopoly of commerce in that direction reverted to the Arabians.

It is only from scanty notices in the pages of Hebrew and Greek writers that we have any knowledge of the maritime enterprises of the Phoenicians, for commercial jealousy led to their concealment as far as possible from other nations. The circumnavigation of Africa, ascribed to them, is inherently improbable. But their colonists at Gades, near the modern Cadiz, seem to have extended their voyages to our south-western shores, as certainly their brethren, the Carthaginians, did. An expedition was despatched by that people under Himilco, which, after a four months' sail, reached the country where tin and lead were to be procured. This was distinguished by a promontory, a bay, and some islands contiguous to the coast of Albion, and within two days' sail of the sacred island, Ierne, or Ireland. Heeren supposes the Lizard Point of the present day, Mount's Bay, and the semi-island of St Michael's Mount, to represent these localities. But Carthage at the same date, conceived to be about 570 B.C., sent out a fleet in an opposite direction, which deserves notice as the first voyage of discovery of which a circumstantial record is extant. This is styled the Periplus, or 'Voyage of Hanno, commander of the Carthaginians,' and may be viewed as a Greek translation of the official report of the admiral in the Punic language. The original is said to have been inscribed on a tablet, and placed in the temple of Saturn at Carthage.

The fleet had colonisation in view on the north-west coast of Africa, and hence took out persons of both sexes in sixty large vessels. Two days after passing the Pillars of Hercules, or the Strait of Gibraltar, the first disembarkation took place; the settlers were left on an extensive plain, a position answering to that of the present town of Mogadore. The expedition went on following the sinuosities of the shore, and successively landed

five more detachments of the passengers. It is impossible to identify the capes doubled, and the inlets entered, by the names given. But the description of the river-large and broad, full of crocodiles and hippopotami-seems to point to the Senegal; while the highland region afterwards coasted, covered with odoriferous trees, and inhabited by timid blacks, reminds us of Senegambia. By day all was still and lifeless on the shore, but upon the approach of night, fires were observed on the hills, and cries of wild merriment were heard, with the sounds of music, according to existing negro usages. The voyagers retraced their course owing to the want of provisions, and met with their most remarkable adventure at the extreme point reached. There was a large inlet of the sea, where, on an island, strange-looking savages were encountered, the females being covered with hair. This was a band of Gorillas, as the interpreters called them, so notorious in our own time. The males defended themselves vigorously with stones, but three females were captured. These soon broke their bonds, and fought so furiously with their teeth and nails that they were killed. The skins were stuffed, and taken home. Thus Carthage, twenty-five centuries ago, had specimens of the fierce brutes which our museums have only very recently acquired.

During the most flourishing period of Phoenician trade and power, the Greeks gradually became formidable upon the seas, and encroached upon their commerce. Abandoning their homes in a body to avoid subjection, the Phocæans emigrated to the mouth of the Rhone, and founded Massilia, the modern Marseille; Greek settlements were likewise early planted in Southern Italy, Sicily, and Spain; and thus they were in the way of acquiring information respecting the expeditions and discoveries of the Phoenician colonists. But it is remarkable, that at a later date—namely, 484 B. C.—the age of Herodotus, who may be called the Father of Descriptive Geography as well as of History, little was known by him of Western Europe. He was well acquainted by his travels with the countries of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris, and with those around the Caspian and Black Seas. His information-obtained by report, extended to the higher regions of the Nile, the banks of the Indus, the confines of Tartary, the shores of the Sea of Aral, the line of the Ural Mountains, and towards the heart of modern Russia. But he was dubious respecting the fact of a great river in Europe flowing into the sea towards the north-an obvious reference to the Rhine; he was even equally so of there being a sea in that direction. He never mentions Rome, then beginning the fourth century of its existence; and though the Cassiterides, or tin islands, are named, it is in entire ignorance of their local position. Herodotus was strikingly correct in relation to the Caspian. It is described as a sea by itself, having no communication with any other; of oblong form, with the greatest extent north and south; and estimates of the length and breadth are given which are believed to be accurate. Four centuries later, Strabo introduced it in his pages as an arm of the Northern Ocean, connected with it by a narrow channel. A century still later, Ptolemy restored the representation of its distinctness, but made it an oblong, trending east and west. So it figured on all maps down to the middle of the sixteenth century, when an Englishman, who twice crossed its waters, Anthony Jenkinson, contributed to correct the distortion, without any idea that he was vindicating the geography of Herodotus.

The first Greek adventurer into western and northern seas, Pytheas of Marseilles, flourished soon after the first Greek historian and geographer, though his age cannot be fixed with greater precision than in the interval between Herodotus and Alexander the Great. He coasted Spain and Gaul, arrived at Britain, called Albion by the natives; and after passing along its southern and eastern shores, he estimated from their extent the circuit of the island at forty thousand stadia. Sailing further north, he reached

Thule, clothed with perpetual fogs, where earth, air, and sea seemed blended in chaotic confusion, and the sun was beheld above the horizon for twenty-four hours together at the summer solstice. It is impossible to define the particular region indicated, to which the term Ultima was afterwards added to indicate its remoteness. But a part of the peninsula of Jutland anciently bore the name of Thiu-land; a portion of the Norwegian coast is still called Thele-mark; and the Shetland Isles-the shattered relics of an old land, where the length of the longest day is nearly twenty hours--have been referred to as answering generally to the description. Of no locality outside the Arctic Circle is it true that the sun at midsummer is above the horizon for the entire day. But Pytheas might gather information respecting this phenomenon of higher latitudes, and suppose it applicable to those he visited, owing to the observation of the long days there. It is certain that several centuries later the Romans imagined there was constant daylight in summer in the northern parts of our island, from the fact of the nights being then so brief and bright. Tacitus expressly affirms that 'in the furthest part of Britain, the nights are so clear, you can hardly tell when daylight begins or ends; and when the sky is not overcast with clouds, you may see all night long, the light of the sun, which does not rise, or go down, but moves quite round.'

The navigator passed into the Baltic, and undoubtedly reached its amber coast, the shores of modern Prussia, between Dantzic and Memel, the grand repository of this carbonaceous mineral. He speaks of the sea throwing it up in considerable quantities, as at present; of the natives selling it to their neighbours, the Teutones; and through their hands it no doubt passed to the south. This we know to have been the case in a subsequent age; for Pliny represents the mineral coming overland into the north of Italy, where the women wore it in necklaces as an amulet. The trade might have existed for centuries, and this seems intimated by the old tradition of a sacred road across the Alps. Amber, a very costly article in early times, was known and wrought into various personal ornaments in the Homeric age. Thus a kidnapped prince speaks in the Odyssey:

'An artist, such he seemed, for sale produced,
Beads of bright amber, riveted in gold.'

Electrical properties were first noticed by the Greeks in amber, which it develops in a high degree on being rubbed. It is from their name for the mineral, electron, that we have our word electricity. Pytheas was not only an expert and daring seaman, but a physical inquirer in general. He originated a classification of climates according to the lengths of the days and nights; determined the latitude of his native city, Massilia, with remarkable accuracy; was aware of the influence of the moon upon the tides; and knew that the pole-star in the Lesser Bear did not mark the true polar point. His intercourse with the Gothic nations is evident from a reference being made to mead, their favourite beverage.

While various opinions were set afloat by the Greek philosophers respecting the figure of the earth, the offspring of the fancy-that of a plain, a cylinder, a cube, a drum, and a high mountain, with a base of infinite extension, around the summit of which the stars circulated its spherical shape, taught by Thales, was placed on the basis of evidence by Pythagoras, who observed the varying attitudes of the stars occasioned by their change of place. Soon afterwards, the opinion of the earth being suspended in equilibrio, and supported by the air, became widely prevalent, or as Socrates says in Plato's Phado, it is wrapped about and pressed equally in every direction by the universe. By Aristotle its globular form was firmly held, because some stars seen in Greece were not visible in Egypt, being lost beneath the more northerly horizon. He also inferred it from the appearance of the circular shadow projected by the earth on the disc of the moon in eclipses; and

came to the conclusion, from the same circumstance, that the globe could not be a very large one. Reasoning on the hypothesis of the earth being a ball of moderate dimensions, he conceived the coasts of Spain to be at no great distance from the shores of India-the very conclusion which eighteen centuries later led Columbus to attempt the passage of the Atlantic. Aristotle, a universal genius, was in possession of all the geographical knowledge of his day. He mentions Taprobana or Ceylon; the great river Crametes, rising from a source near that of the Nile, and flowing westward to the ocean, either the Senegal or the Niger; and the two large islands Albion and Ierne, on the north of Celtica, which are for the first time associated under a common name, that of Brittanicæ. The career of his pupil, Alexander the Great, illustrated to his countrymen the productions and people of India, of which they had only previously heard, and to a very limited extent. After the overthrow of the Persian empire, he led his troops to the banks of the Oxus, crossed the Hindu-Koosh, passed the Indus near the modern Attock, and reached the heart of the Punjaub. The Greeks now obtained personal knowledge of the multitudinous population of the country, consisting of races corresponding to the Ethiopians in colour, but without the crisp hair of the negro; of their well-watered rice-fields and finely-woven fabrics; and of their peculiar habits, as the existence of castes, devoting widows to the funeral-pile, and the austerities practised by their wandering faqueers. With astonishment the luxuriant vegetation was noticed, the fanlike palms, the trees whose summits were beyond the reach of the arrow, the leaves larger than the shield of an infantry soldier, and the vast spread of the banyan or Indian fig, which takes root by its branches, and is described as forming a leafy arbour like a tent with pillars, under which a thousand persons may assemble. Not less surprise was excited by the number of elephants, wild and domesticated; the Bactrian camel, with

two humps; the large-bearded stag, with a horse's mane; and the Indian buffalo. Constructing a fleet, Macedonia's madman' descended the Indus to its mouth, sent part of his army home by sea, and returned himself with the remainder, through the burning