Note Back to Main Text — Chapter IV · THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES. EASTWARD OR PORTUGUESE ROUTE.
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No other expedition in ancient times is known to have proceeded so far south as Sierra Leone. Two other voyages upon this Atlantic coast are mentioned, but without definite details. The one was that of Sataspes (about 470 B. C.), narrated by Herodotus, who merely tells us that a coast was reached where undersized men, clad in palm-leaf garments, Voyages of Sataspes and Eudoxus. fled to the hills at sight of the strange visitors.[355] The other was that of Eudoxus (about 85 B. C.), related by Posidonius, the friend and teacher of Cicero. The story is that this Eudoxus, in a voyage upon the east coast of Africa, having a philological turn of mind, wrote down the words of some of the natives whom he met here and there along the shore. He also picked up a ship's prow in the form of a horse's head, and upon his return to Alexandria some merchants professed to recognize it as belonging to a ship of Cadiz. Eudoxus thereupon concluded that Africa was circumnavigable, and presently sailed through the Mediterranean and out upon the Atlantic. Somewhere upon the coast of Mauritania he found natives who used some words of similar sound to those which he had written down when visiting the eastern coast, whence he concluded that they were people of the same race. At this point he turned back, and the sequel of the story was unknown to Posidonius.[356]