Note 546 — Chapter XVIII · PHENICIANS.

Skylax, after following the line of coast from the Mediterranean outside of the strait of Gibraltar, and then south-westward along Africa as far as the island of Kernê, goes on to say, that “beyond Kernê the sea is no longer navigable from shallows, and mud, and sea-weed:” Τῆς δὲ Κέρνης νήσου τὰ ἐπέκεινα οὐκέτι ἐστὶ πλωτὰ διὰ βραχύτητα θαλάττης καὶ πηλὸν καὶ φῦκος. Ἐστὶ δὲ τὸ φῦκος τῆς δοχμῆς τὸ πλάτος καὶ ἄνωθεν ὀξὺ, ὥστε κεντεῖν (Skylax, c. 109). Nearchus, on undertaking his voyage down the Indus, and from thence into the Persian gulf, is not certain whether the external sea will be found navigable—εἰ δὴ πλωτός γέ ἐστιν ὁ ταύτῃ πόντος (Nearchi Periplus, p. 2: compare p. 40, ap. Geogr. Minor. vol. i, ed. Hudson). Pytheas described the neighborhood of Thulê as a sort of chaos—a medley of earth, sea, and air, in which you could neither walk nor sail: οὔτε γῆ καθ᾽ αὑτὴν ὕπηρχεν ἔτι οὔτε θάλασσα οὔτε ἀὴρ, ἀλλὰ σύγκριμά τι ἐκ τούτων πλεύμονι θαλασσίῳ ἐοικὸς, ἐν ᾧ φησὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ τὴν θάλασσαν αἰωρεῖσθαι καὶ τὰ σύμπαντα, καὶ τοῦτον ὡς ἂν δεσμὸν εἶναι τῶν ὅλων, μήτε πορευτὸν μήτε πλωτὸν ὑπάρχοντα· τὸ μὲν οὖν τῷ πλεύμονι ἐοικὸς αὐτὸς (Pytheas) ἑωρακέναι, τἄλλα δὲ λέγειν ἐξ ἀκοῆς. (Strabo, ii, p. 104). Again, the priests of Memphis told Herodotus that their conquering hero Sesostris had equipped a fleet in the Arabian gulf, and made a voyage into the Erythræan sea, subjugating people everywhere, “until he came to a sea no longer navigable from shallows,”—οὐκέτι πλωτὴν ὑπὸ βραχέων (Herod. ii, 109). Plato represents the sea without the Pillars of Hêraklês as impenetrable and unfit for navigation, in consequence of the large admixture of earth, mud, or vegetable covering, which had arisen in it from the disruption of the great island or continent Atlantis (Timæus, p. 25; and Kritias, p. 108); which passages are well illustrated by the Scholiast, who seems to have read geographical descriptions of the character of this outer sea: τοῦτο καὶ οἱ τοὺς ἐκείνῃ τόπους ἱστοροῦντες λέγουσιν, ὡς πάντα τεναγώδη τὸν ἐκεῖ εἶναι χῶρον· τέναγος δὲ ἐστὶν ἰλύς τις, ἐπιπολάζοντος ὕδατος οὐ πολλοῦ, καὶ βοτάνης ἐπιφαινομένης τούτῳ. See also Plutarch’s fancy of the dense, earthy, and viscous Kronian sea (some days to the westward of Britain), in which a ship could with difficulty advance, and only by means of severe pulling with the oars (Plutarch, De Facie in Orbe Lunæ, c. 26, p. 941). So again in the two geographical productions in verse by Rufus Festus Avienus (Hudson, Geogr. Minor. vol. iv, Descriptio Orbis Terræ, v, 57, and Ora Maritima, v, 406-415): in the first of these two, the density of the water of the western ocean is ascribed to its being saturated with salt,—in the second, we have shallows, large quantities of sea-weed, and wild beasts swimming about, which the Carthaginian Himilco affirmed himself to have seen:—

Compare also v, 115-130 of the same poem, where the author again quotes from a voyage of Himilco, who had been four months in the ocean outside of the Pillars of Hercules:—

The dead calm, mud, and shallows of the external ocean are touched upon by Aristot. Meteorolog. ii, 1, 14, and seem to have been a favorite subject of declamation with the rhetors of the Augustan age. See Seneca, Suasoriar. i, 1.

Even the companions and contemporaries of Columbus, when navigation had made such comparative progress, still retained much of these fears respecting the dangers and difficulties of the unknown ocean: “Le tableau exagéré (observes A. von Humboldt, Examen Critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie, t. iii, p. 95) que la ruse des Phéniciens avait tracé des difficultés qu’opposaient à la navigation au delà des Colonnes d’Hercule, de Cerné, et de l’Ile Sacrée (Ierné), le fucus, le limon, le manque de fond, et le calme perpétuel de la mer, ressemble d’une manière frappante aux récits animés des premiers compagnons de Colomb.”

Columbus was the first man who traversed the sea of Sargasso, or area of the Atlantic ocean south of the Azores, where it is covered by an immense mass of sea-weed for a space six or seven times as large as France: the alarm of his crew at this unexpected spectacle was considerable. The sea-weed is sometimes so thickly accumulated, that it requires a considerable wind to impel the vessel through it. The remarks and comparisons of M. von Humboldt, in reference to ancient and modern navigation, are highly interesting. (Examen, ut sup. pp. 69, 88, 91, etc.)

J. M. Gesner (Dissertat. de Navigationibus extra Columnas Herculis, sects. 6 and 7) has a good defence of the story told by Herodotus. Major Rennell also adopts the same view, and shows by many arguments how much easier the circumnavigation was from the East than from the West (Geograph. System of Herodotus, p. 680); compare Ukert, Geograph. der Griechen und Römer. vol. i, p. 61; Mannert, Geog. d. G. und Römer, vol. i, pp. 19-26. Gossellin (Recherches sur la Géogr. des Anc. i, p. 149) and Mannert both reject the story as not worthy of belief: Heeren defends it (Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, i, 2, pp. 86-95).

Agatharchides, in the second century B. C., pronounces the eastern coast of Africa, southward of the Red sea, to be as yet unexamined: he treats it as a matter of certainty, however, that the sea to the south-westward is continuous with the Western ocean (De Rubro Mari, Geog. Minores, ed. Huds. v, i, p. 11).