cients, for the very reason which should have moved them to belief; namely, the appearance of the Sun in the North at mid-day.

5. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, being the sovereign of the vast Persian Empire, was influenced by that insatiable ambition which has distinguished all conquerors. He planned an expedition to India, about 510 B. C., in order to conquer the country; but that he might not proceed without knowing something of the nature of the country he was about to attack, he fitted out a naval expedition, which he placed under the command of Scylax, the Caryandæan, giving him orders to sail down the river Indus, into the Southern Ocean; then to return by steering westward, and to make the best discoveries he could, as to the strength and riches of the countries on both sides of the river, as also on the sea-coast. Scylax, in pursuance of these instructions, passed down the Indus into the Indian Ocean, and returned by the straits of Babelmandel into the Red Sea, and landed on the Egyptian coast, near the neck of land which we now call the Isthmus of Suez. Scylax employed about thirty months in making this voyage; and gave a favourable report to Darius concerning the nature of the countries which he had seen. Accordingly, Darius fitted out a naval armament, which was to co-operate with his army, in the subjugation of the Indians; this attempt of Darius was successful; and opened the way for a more frequent intercourse between India and the nations bordering on the Mediterranean. The voyage of Scylax is believed to have been the first maritime expedition to India.

6. The next attempt to sail round the continent of Africa was that of Sataspes, a Persian nobleman, whom Xerxes had condemned to death, but whose sentence was commuted to the circumnavigation of Africa. He sailed from Egypt, in the year B. C. 480, through the straits of Gibraltar; and then southward. But, horror-struck at the mighty waves of the Atlantic, those walls of water, which dashed upon the shores of the desert,-after beating about for some months, he returned home, and suffered according to his original sentence.

The Persians were generally unacquainted with maritime affairs, and therefore never made any advance in the naval art, worth describing; this accounts for the want of perseverance on the part of Sataspes and his crew. The Athenians had made great improvements in their war-shipping, when the Persians attacked them during the reign of Xerxes. These improvements related chiefly to the formation of decks over the rowers, whereon the men of war carried on their operations without interfering with the rowers, and impeding the motions of the ship. This is believed to have contributed greatly to the success of the Athenians over the Persians, in their naval conflicts with that power.

7. In a collection of ancient voyages, published about one hundred and thirty years ago, there is a curious account of the discovery of an island, about five or six hundred years before Christ. There can be no doubt that this narrative is founded in truth; but that it is made more important than it really was by exaggeration, and a love of the marvellous. It is a translation from an ancient writer.

"There was one Jambulus, who from his youth was addicted to learning: his father was a merchant; and, after his decease, the son applied himself, with great diligence, to the same profession. This man, travelling into Arabia, in order to purchase spices, was there taken prisoner, with all his company, by a party of robbers. At first, he and one of his companions were employed in keeping sheep; but they were soon after carried off by the Ethiopians, inhabiting the coast, who conveyed them into their own country, in order to serve a very extraordinary purpose. These Ethiopians had a custom, which had then subsisted six hundred years, and was originally derived from the direction of an oracle, to expiate the sins of their nation once in an age, or generation, which with them comprehended the space of thirty years, by exposing two strangers, in the following

manner:

64

They prepared a little vessel, well built, and extremely well equipped, with provisions for six months; on board of which the men were put, at a certain season of the year, with instructions to steer directly south, in order to arrive at a certain fortunate island, inhabited by a king and some hospitable people, with whom they might live happily all the rest of their days. The oracle declared, that if these men succeeded in their voyage, the country would enjoy rest and quiet for many years; but if, frighted by the dangers of the sea, they should return, it was ominous to Ethio

| pia; and therefore, they threatened Jambulus and his companion with the severest punishments, in case they did not prosecute their voyage. When the season of the year came, the Ethiopians celebrated the festival of Purgation with most splendid sacrifices; and then, having crowned each of them with garlands, they put Jambulus and his companion on board the vessel that had been prepared for them, and obliged them to put to sea.

"They were four months tossed by the winds and waves, before they arrived on the coast of the island to which they were bound; but at length they reached it safely. In its form it is almost round, being about five thousand stadia in compass; containing about five hundred of our miles, if we allow six hundred stadia to a degree. As soon as they came within sight of land, the people on the island crowded to the shore, to behold them: and, when they landed, multitudes came from all quarters to gaze at and admire them, wondering how they came thither; but treating them with the utmost kindness and civility, and offering them, with the greatest readiness, whatever their country afforded. "These people differed not a little from other nations in their appearance, as well as in their manner; for they were all of a pretty equal size, each of them about four cubits, or six feet high. They bent and turned their bodies with such agility, that their bones seemed to our travellers as flexible as the sinews of other people: their bodies were very tender, notwithstanding which, they were so strong, that whatever they grasped could not be forced out of their hands. On their heads, eye-brows, eye-lids, and on their chins, they had hair; but the rest of their bodies was perfectly smooth. They were handsome and well-shaped; only the holes in their ears were much wider than those of other men, and had fleshy protuberances in them. Their tongues were very singular, being by nature somewhat divided, and cut in their infancy to the very root, so that they seemed double, which enabled them to imitate the notes, and even the chattering of birds; and, if our travellers say true, they could discourse with two people at once.

"This island is situated in a most excellent and moderate climate, lying very near the Equator, so that the people are neither scorched with heat nor perished with cold; enjoying at once, all the seasons, without any division, like ours, of Spring and Harvest. The days and nights there are always of equal length; neither is there any shadow at noon-day, because the sun is directly in the zenith. They are learned in all sorts of sciences, especially in Astrology. They use eight-and-twenty particular letters, for the expressing what they mean, composed of seven characters, each of which is varied four ways. They live long, without ever being sick, and commonly to one hundred and fifty years of

age.

"After Jambulus and his companion had continued in this island seven years, they were compelled to depart, as persons of a vicious life, and not to be broken of foreign customs. Their ship, therefore, being again fitted out for them, and well furnished with provisions, they were constrained to put to sea; and, after continuing their voyage for above four months, they fell, at length, upon the sandy shallows of India, where his companion was drowned, and himself was afterwards cast ashore near a certain village, and carried away by the inhabitants of the place to the king, who was then at a city called Polybothra, or Polimbothra, many days' journey distant from the sea; where he was kindly received by that prince, who had a great love for the Grecians, and was studious in the liberal sciences. At length, having obtained provision from the king, he first sailed into Persia, and from thence safely arrived in Greece."

It has been supposed by most commentators on the above account, that the main incidents are true; but, as was before observed, they have had a tinge of the mavellous imparted to them. With respect to the island mentioned, some have supposed it to be Sumatra,-others Borneo,-others again Java,-while one writer has considered it to be one of the Maldive Islands.

8. About 500 years B. C. the Carthaginians fitted out two expeditions, for the sake of prosecuting discovery to the north and to the south, after clearing the Herculean straits. Hanno commanded one fleet, and proceeded southward, along the coast of Africa; and Himilco steered northward, along the Hiberian and Gallic shores.

Those under Hanno, steered round by Mount Atlas, the pillar of heaven, and doubled "the African Forehead," as its great western promontory was called. By day the land was too hot to walk upon, the country seemed to lie silent

and deserted, in the full unmitigated glare of a vertical sun, but by night the mountains seemed on fire, songs of rejoicing were heard, accompanied with the sounds of flutes, drums, cymbals, and gongs, together with cries, which waked the shrill echoes of night, and startled the senses of the Punic sailors. Scarcely different have been the records of modern travellers, respecting the inhabitants of these tropical wilds; who, fearing to be scorched by the solar ray, pass the day in caverns, or in sylvan shades, and wake up into lively existence under the milder beams of the moon and stars. Here they saw the various species of the monkeytribe, pre-eminent among which is the ourang-outang, original of Satyrs. The Thessalians had, before this, given rise to the fables of the Centaurs, by appearing to their neighbours on horses, which they had been the first to tame. In these places gold was found to be the universal metal; so common that the chains of captives were forged from it. The Carthaginians relate that the transactions which they had with the people of the African coast were carried on in dumb-show, that, a signal having been made with smoke, the savages placed the goods which they had to dispose of on the coast and retired, and that the Carthaginians, having removed these goods, deposited an equivalent. If that which the latter laid down, did not satisfy the former, it was not removed until a suitable addition had been made. This sort of barter is the primeval state of commerce. They were once astounded at the sight of sheets of flame, traversing the country and spreading in every direction down to the sea-shore; a conflagration made by the natives to get rid of the dry and waste grass at the end of autumn. Such were the causes of Africa being the reputed dwelling-place of the Gorgons, and other monstrous creations, springing from ignorant fear. Pliny tells us that this voyage was effected round the whole extent of the African continent.

Himilco, we are told, sailed as far as Britain and Ireland, the great Western Islands. It is generally, and with great reason, believed that the Phoenicians, and subsequently the Carthaginians, traded to the south-western coasts and islands of Britain for tin. Hence, Cornwall and the Scilly Isles were called by the ancients Cassiterides, or Tin-countries, a term derived from the Phoenician and Sanscrit.

9. Pytheas, an illustrious navigator of antiquity, who flourished in France, at Marseilles, a colony from Greece, about 400 years B.C., directed his course to the northwestern parts of Europe. He reached Britain, then called Al-fioun (Albion), or White-land, from the appearance of its cliffs at a distance. He kept on sailing, we are told, towards the north, and arrived at Thule. This is supposed to have been Iceland. Of this place, as also of the other islands and coasts of this sea, he relates that he found, in some parts, the light of the setting sun continuing so strong, till dawn of day, that the stars could not venture to appear; in others he found the sun shining by day and night. This account seems to have perplexed those who would otherwise have been inclined to credit him; but this fact, related by Pytheas, is quite natural during the middle of our summer, when approaching towards the Arctic circle. The converse of this, the polar winter, or the effects of it, felt less in proportion to the diminution of latitude, may apply to the account which we have of Ulysses, who, we read, sailed, perhaps at the fall of the year, to the ends of the ocean, where the Cimmerians dwell in profound gloom, who see neither the rising nor setting sun, but have the veil of night for ever spread over them. The credit of Pytheas was not much improved by his accounts of the four and six-horned sheep on the shores of the Baltic; but modern information attests the general accuracy of the Massilian sailor. Some part of his story wears, at first sight, a fabulous aspect; when we find from Tacitus, who retails it from him, that the noise of the sun in its passage below the ocean is heard; and that the

figures of the gods appear visible, crowned with immortal light. By the latter observation we are to understand the varied effects of the Aurora Borealis; by the former the hollow noise of the rolling sea against the dreary shores of Norway. He intimates, that, in going very far to the north, sea, land, and air, seemed all confused; owing perhaps to fogs:-and that the water was of such a dense character, as could hardly be cleaved by the ship's prow; alluding, perhaps, to the strong tides of those seas. He is said to have been the first who ascribed the tides to the influence of the moon. The vulgar opinion, even up to the time of Mela, in the middle of the first century after Christ, was that the earth was a huge animal, the heaving of whose breast occasioned the rise and fall of the waters. Another opinion was, that the ocean had within itself vast caves, into which the water was regularly received, and out of which it was again as regularly ejected. Previously to quitting the Mediterranean, the tidal influence had not come under the consideration of man. This sea scarcely indicates any perception of that lunar attraction, which operates upon the waters of the earth generally. The probable reason is, that this sea, as also the Baltic, which admits of a parity of reasoning, is almost entirely cut off from the main oceans; and that the narrowness of the connecting straits does not allow the swell of the great waters to be felt within the requisite time of the moon's passing the meridian.

10. Before speaking of the naval exploits of Alexander the Great, of Macedon, we may mention that Curtius gives a circumstantial account of a fire-ship, which was equipped by the Tyrians, at the time their capital was besieged by Alexander. Having selected one of the largest galleys they possessed, they loaded it by the stern with stones and other ballast, so that the prow became considerably elevated above the surface of the water. The whole of the vessel, which was above water, was covered very thickly with sulphur and other inflammable substances; which operation being completed, advantage was taken of a wind favourable for the attempt, and all the sails being set, the crew, who, in aid of the sails, used their oars also, directed it towards the mole which Alexander had, with so much difficulty, laboured to construct. When they had approached sufficiently near to the destined object of destruction, the vessel was set on fire, and the crew jumped into boats, which had followed for the purpose of receiving them. This project completely succeeded, and Alexander was frustrated in his attempt on Tyre at that period. This place he ultimately subdued, and having no more land to conquer he sought the waters.

We now come to the voyage of Nearchus, the Macedonian admiral, down the Indus, along the Erythrean Sea, and up the Persian Gulf, as far as the mouth of the Tigris. Alexander the Great, having made himself omnipotent by land, resolved to encroach, at least by his lieutenants, on the realms of ocean. He therefore set in motion an expedition for maritime discovery. He sailed at the head of the fleet down the Indus, and gazed upon the expanse of ocean, which the ancients deemed the circular boundary of the world. The ocean had been held, from the oldest times, to be a river running round the earth; which river was bounded by the dark clouds of heaven. Such, we are told, was it depicted on the shield of Achilles, which seems to have presented on its surface, a map of the world, as then known. That this notion was very aneient we learn from the Sacred Writings;-"When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling-band for it." Job. XXXVIII. 9. The writer of the Book of Job probably lived nearly 2000 years before the birth of our Saviour, Christ.

We find that Alexander, at sight of the crocodiles, for some time confounded the Indus with the Nile; owing pro

bably to the saying of Herodotus, that the Nile and the Indus were the only rivers, in which the crocodile had been seen. Having arrived at the mouth of the Indus, the Grecian army was terribly alarmed at the sight of the huge and awful billows, which rolled in at the mouth of this river. They had perhaps never seen the ebb and flow of the tide before: so that scarcely any officer of this vast and magnificent army could be got to head the further progress of this enterprise; for all felt doubt and dismay at the sight of the ocean, whose breast heaving, in this part of the globe, with higher tides than in most other seas, seemed to portend celestial vengeance at their impiety in approaching the limit of the world. This horror had been increased by finding, at break of day, their ships, which they had anchored during night, left on dry ground by the ebb of the tide. When, however, Nearchus had accepted the command, and they had got out to sea, the first thing that struck their attention was, that the sun being vertical at noon day, they projected no shadow, and that upon occasion, it even deflected towards the south; that stars which they had seen high up in the northern sky, now decreased in altitude, or sank altogether below the horizon; and that others, never visible before, now rose up in the south. As Nearchus coasted along Gedrosia, now Beloochistan, his sailors saw, for the first time, the whale, spouting out streams of water into the air, which, descending like a whirlpool, so alarmed the sailors, that their navigation would have been at an end, had not Nearchus, by raising the shouts of his men, and the din of trumpets, terrified and scared down the monster of the deep. For a great part of their voyage they found it difficult, or impossible, to procure corn, so that they were reduced to live upon fish; and, worse than all, as these Greeks dolefully complained, on the flesh of turtle, which abounded on the coast!

11. The voyages of Eudoxus now claim our attention. He was a native of Cyzicus, who flourished about 130 years B. C. He seems to have been an officer of fortune. Like many others, whose ardent minds have impelled them to explore, and to relate, things strange and unheard of, he has been misrepresented and ridiculed by the geographers and critics of his time. There is a natural indisposition to believe that which does not accord with one's own experience; through which incredulity we are sometimes as liable to err, as by an unthinking confidence. Bruce, the celebrated traveller, at the end of the last century, who had related the circumstance, not unusual, of an Abyssinian cutting steaks from the flank of a cow, skewering up the wound, and then driving her out to pasture, was thus satirized by the witty poet of the day :

Nor have I been where men--what lack, alas! Kill half a cow, and turn the rest to grass. Eudoxus made several voyages down the Red Sea, and towards the East, at the instigation, and with the aid of Ptolemy Euergetes, king of Egypt, and his successor; but, eager to pursue the grand object of nautical honour, the circumnavigation of Africa, he seems to have eschewed royal patronage, and to have set out on his own account, with the assistance of some friends whom he got to join him.

We ought to observe that the traditions, or records, of the circuit of Africa, having been formerly made, were now becoming apocryphal; the geographers of the times having decided that the regions to the south, or the torrid zone, were utterly uninhabitable, by reason of the extreme heat, while the regions to the north, forming the frigid zone, were unapproachable, by reason of the intense cold. They believed, theoretically, that there was another temperate zone, corresponding with their own, beyond the torrid; but that this "outhern temperate zone was completely severed from the northern by unendurable heat. Hence, in the time of Mela and Ptolemy, it was believed that the ocean passed through Africa, and that the Nile rose in the southern division, and, flowing under the sea, appeared again in Upper Egypt.

For some time all proceeded favourably, until the crew of Eudoxus, fearing lest they should be swallowed up amid the heaving billows of the Atlantic, urged the vessel so close to the shore, that it was stranded on one of the dangerous sand-banks abounding on the coast. A smaller and more compact galley of fifty oars, was formed from the fragments of the stranded vessel; in which ship he continued to proceed southward, but was at last forced to return, his resources not being equivalent to the end proposed, after the disaster of the shipping. He is said to have made a second attempt, with the issue of which we are not so well acquainted. He seems to have been set down as an impostor; and is reported to have told many fables and other absurd stories of his voyages and adventures. According to some, he really made the circuit of Africa. Some nations he found dumb; which relation has in it a stroke of probability, for, not understanding the language of foreigners, the natives might have thought it as well to be silent.

Of some people he related, we are told, that they had no tongues, of others, that being mouthless, they received their food up the nostrils. Some nations, we know, completely cover up the lower parts of their faces; but the account of things originally true, though strange, becomes exaggerated and distorted by passing from one narrator to another. In a word, this navigator seems, by common consent, to have been more meritorious than fortunate.

12. When the Romans began, and continued to practise navigation, it was to serve their purpose of conquest; but, to gratify their luxury, the extremities of the known world were ransacked, and thus maritime enterprise was indirectly promoted. Their ships, when unemployed in war, made a survey of the dominions which their power had acquired. Thus, at the end of the first century of the Christian era, Agricola, the governor of Britain, discovered it to be an island by sailing round it. The opportunity of surveying the coasts of the Erythrean Sea was furnished by the regular trading voyages, undertaken by the Alex andrian merchants from the north of the Red Sea down into the Indian Ocean, which was the ancient Erythrean. The merchant-vessels of the Roman empire seem to have navigated this sea to the right, as far south as the Isle of Madagascar; and to the left, as far as the coasts of

Malabar, of which Arrian, who flourished about A. D. 140, gives us an account, in his work called the Periplus, or Circumnavigation. The general facts herein related do not differ materially from those which have come under modern observation; the people of the coast are little changed in manners or living, their country has the same appearance, and its productions are much the same as the author of the Periplus alludes to.

With regard to the form of the vessels, employed by the Phoenicians and other neighbouring nations, about the same period, it seems that those vessels intended for commercial purposes were without keels, and bore a certain resemblance to the barges of the Hollanders at the present day. They were flat-floored, round, broad, drawing little water, and of very great breadth, in proportion to their length; so that they might be capable of containing a larger quantity of commodities than would be the case under any other form. Their floor-timbers were continuous; and, with the addition of one futtock only on each side (called by the Greeks encalia, meaning the ribs or internal parts of the animal body), the frame was completed,

Before the introduction of the keel, the framework of the vessel was formed of timbers bent round, and kept in the curved form by beams passing across, to which the timbers were bolted; but as this was a laborious practice, the keel became introduced, by which the necessary shape of the frame was more easily ensured. The Latin word for keel is carina, from curro, to run, alluding to the mode in which the keel runs or cuts through the water. The frame was covered with planking; the planks being fastened to the frame by large nails or bolts formed of iron, some of which passed through both plank and timber, and were clenched at the end to render the fixture more complete. It has been ascertained, that the mode of dove-tailing, which is now so frequently applied in carpentry, was known in those days; for when the planks were not long enough to reach from stem to stern of the vessel, they were joined end to end, the ends being dove-tailed into each other, by which they were prevented from starting out from their places.

We may here notice, in addition to what was said in the first article, a strange mode of attacking an enemy, as adopted by Hannibal, in a war with Pontus; which was by throwing vessels filled with snakes on the enemies' decks. The ships of Pontus thought it strange to see potters vessels hanging from the yard-arms of Hannibal's ships; but when those same vessels were thrown on their own decks, and snakes were perceived to crawl out of them, the effect produced was just what Hannibal had anticipated; namely, that the uncommon event frightened and dismayed a brave people, who would not have shrunk from any of the ordinary dangers of war. On other occasions, casks containing inflammable matter were hung from the projecting head of the vessel; and when the head was brought so as to be over the deck of the enemy's vessel, the casks were opened, and the inflammable matter shaken out, and precipitated upon the deck. Sometimes these casks were placed on the ends of long poles, placed across or aslant the deck.

the time, and allows that if trees be cut down between the 15th and the 23rd days of the moon, they will endure for a long time without perishing; but he adds that, if that limitation be transgressed, the daily practice and experience of all artisans may convince the world it would become worm-eaten and rotten in an incredibly short space of time. Some supposed that the timber felled on the day of the new moon was absolutely incorruptible; they were even attentive to the quarter from whence the wind blew, and to the season of the year; for instance, in the beginning of Autumn it was deemed improper to fell timber for shipbuilding, except the wind was westerly, or, in the Winter, unless it blew from the north,

THE ROMANCE OF ANCIENT NAVIGATION, AS INDUCED BY THE DESIRE OF MONOPOLY IN TRADE.

We must now say a few more words on the motives, which are presumed to have led the Phoenicians, and the subsequent mariners of antiquity, to the affectation of mystery and horror, with which they were so wont to shroud all their naval enterprises. The Phoenicians, so celebrated for commerce, and consequently for navigation, whose pilots manned the ships of the nations, and conducted the vessels of Solomon over the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Mediterranean, as far as Tarshish, "the silver country," are placed even by Homer in a most unfavourably moral light. Iniquity and deceit are their characteristics, both in Sacred and Profane history. Hence the term "Punic faith," as applied to the Carthaginians, implied treachery. The especial source, to which the equivocal conduct of the people of Tyre and Sidon may be traced up, is their desire and endeavour to preserve to themselves exclusively the trade and commerce of the world; possessing, as they did, the privilege of serving the Egyptian, and other nations, whose religion deterred them from pursuing maritime enterprises. The people of Egypt had long ceased to cultivate the naval art; for they dreaded the sea, which swallowed up their great divinity, the Nile. This river the Phoenicians were never allowed to enter. In such sort did the Arabians, in after ages, become navigators for the Hindoos, who were superstitiously afraid of the sea. This gave the Phoenicians power, wealth, pleasure; in short, every advantage, whether for good or ill, which this world furnishes. They were also the great slave-traders of the world. Having once attained to this pitch of envied distinction, they could not bear the idea of putting their convenience in jeopardy, as they knew, or fancied, they must do, if rivals competed with them in the foreign markets. This leads us to suspect the motives, which made Hiram, the Tyrian monarch, sneer at the inland cities, given up to him by Solomon. The Phoenicians wanted, doubtless, a harbour for ships, such as that of Joppa. The keenness and activity of the Greeks was justly formidable to them. They therefore went upon a bullying system; and, like arrant braggarts, told how they had met in various climes withThe Cannibals, that did each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders.

The Phoenicians, with Tyre and Sidon as their two prin cipal cities, engrossed, as has been before stated, by far the greater part of the commerce of the then known world : they brought the gold, and gems, and spices of the East from India, Persia, &c., to Tyre and Sidon, by caravans or land-carriage, and distributed them to the nations of the West by means of their shipping on the Mediterranean. From an early period, however, they thirsted to gain possession of some port, which should give them a command of the navigation of the Red Sea. This object, for a long time, they could not attain; for the eastern shores of the Red Sea, or Arabian Gulf, were in the hands of the Arabians and Assyrians, while the western shores were in the power of the Egyptians and Ethiopians. They therefore strove to obtain possession of some port on the Medi

As the science advanced in general use and repute, practice and experience introduced certain maxims, some of which were really found necessary, while others were whimsical and capricious. Hesiod, for example, informs us that it was deemed improper to fell any timber for the purpose of ship-building, except on the 17th day of the moon's age, because, it being then in the wane, the sap or internal moisture, which is the grand cause of early decay, would be considerably lessened. Another writer extends

order that, by a land-carriage of a few miles, they might connect together the navigation of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. This object they attained by gaining possession of Rhinocorura, a city on the boundary between Palestine and Egypt. By this plan they extended their commerce to a vast extent, by making the Red Sea the channel of communication between Tyre and the eastern countries, instead of transporting their commodities by land. The jealousy with which the Phoenicians regarded any attempt on the part of other nations to share with them