CHAPTER III.

The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and their Maritime ResearchesThe Voyage of Jason-The Fleets of Solomon and the Land of Ophir The Voyages of Scylax, Sataspes, and Jambulus-The Discoveries of Hanno-The Phoenicians in Cornwall-State of Geographical Knowledge among the Ancients.

As the science of navigation advanced at a creeping pace, and but a small amount of fresh experience was laid up by one generation for the benefit of the next, it took very many ages to explore the Mediterranean, Tyrrhene, Adriatic, and Egean Seas. The people of Tyre and Sidon, the Phoenicians, were among the first whom the spirit of commerce and the desire of gain prompted to fresh discoveries; their great antiquity is perhaps the reason why our knowledge of them is obtained from incidental and isolated accounts. The first Phoenician colonies in Northern Africa were said to have been founded about 1490 B.C., though this is more or less matter of speculation. According to tradition, Carthage owes its existence to Dido or Elissa, daughter of a King of Tyre, who, driven from that city by the cruelty of her brother Pygmalion, who had murdered her husband, established a colony in the vicinity of Utica. Here about the year 878 B.C., 125 years before the foundation of Rome, the great queen, immortalised by the genius of Virgil, founded the city, which was at

FOUNDATION OF CARTHAGE.

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one time the rival of Rome in military glory, and her superior in commercial greatness.

The city was built on a promontory, connected by a narrow isthmus with the mainland, and about fifteen miles distant from the modern town of Tunis; on the isthmus was the citadel, called Byrsa, situated on a rock and surrounded by a triple wall, each sixty feet high, and strengthened at intervals with forts, a stupendous and impregnable work. The city, which had a circumference of twenty miles, and a population of 700,000 souls, was bounded on the north and east by the ocean; and, according to Botticher, in his 'Geschichte de Carthager,' on the eastern side of the peninsula was the harbour, formed of an inner and outer basin, the former called Cothon, being used exclusively for vessels of war, and having round its sides the naval storehouses, and the docks, capable of containing 240 ships. The extent of territory subjugated by Carthage is computed at about 1600 geographical miles, and they had settlements as far West as the Straits of Gades (or Gibraltar) and even on the West Coast of Africa. They also seized the Balearic Isles, Sardinia, Corsica, and Malta, and had colonies in Spain, and at one time held sway over the greater portion of Sicily. For two and a half centuries they waged incessant war with the Greek colonies established in the latter island, notably with Syracuse.

With the Carthaginians originated the idea of quitting the Mediterranean by the Straits of Gades, of sailing southward, circumnavigating the coast of Africa, and then returning northward by the Red Sea, towards the Levant, or eastern side of the Mediterranean. This notion seems to have been cherished for ages, as the crowning act of maritime enterprise; knowing only a small portion of the globe, and conceiving that portion

to be upon an extended plane, those who held a voyage from Crete to Egypt to be a signal proof of naval courage, and regarded as a subject of thankfulness and gratitude their having escaped the dangers of Scylla and Charybdis, and the Syrtes, those wavebound prisons of mariners, manifestly feared to commit themselves to unknown waters, tracking shores which the reports of others, who had never seen these regions, no less than their own fears, had represented as the abode of every horror. In short, distance from the land seems to have alarmed all the ancients, who, upon every occasion, when quitting sight of the shore fancied they saw, as Homer tells us:

'A length of ocean and unbounded sky,

Which scare the sea-fowl in a year o'erfly.'

The general truth of these observations is corroborated by the story of the inhabitant of Pamphylia, who was taken prisoner and carried to Egypt, as told by Eustathius, the commentator of Homer. He was kept as a slave, for a very long time, at a town near one of the mouths of the Nile, where Damietta now stands; and, being frequently employed to assist in maritime business, conceived the idea of committing himself to the mercy of the waves in a sailing-boat, in order that he might once again behold his native country. Having provided himself to the best of his means and ability, he set sail, resolving to perish in the ocean rather than remain longer in captivity. He traversed the expanse of waters which lies between Egypt and Asia Minor, and arrived safely at Pamphylia. From this bold and unusual adventure he lost his original name, and received the appellation of Mononantes, or the lone sailor.

The following are among the chief voyages of ancient history with which we are acquainted, beginning with the

THE VOYAGE OF JASON.

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famous venture of Jason in search of the Golden Fleece, 'known to every schoolboy,' as Lord Macaulay would have said. This voyage is decidedly apocryphal, but ought not to be omitted in an epitome of the nautical adventures of the ancients. In the thirteenth century B.C., Jason, accompanied by a Phoenician pilot, sailed in the ship Argo, over the Pontus Euxinus, now known as the Euxine or Black Sea, to recover the treasure which had been carried away by Phryxus, in the ship Aries, or Ram. The Phoenician word for 'treasure,' is about the same as the Greek word for 'fleece;' hence, the confusion of ideas, by which the poets profited to adorn their legends, for Jason was reported to have made a voyage to recover the ram with the golden fleece. Those who manned Jason's ship were called Argonauts, or sailors of the Argo; and, at their return, declared that their passage had been alongside of the abodes of the Just and the prisons of the infernal regions. It has been sought to clear up the account of this voyage by the far-fetched explanation that the inhabitants on the eastern side of the Euxine Sea were in the habit of extending fleeces of wool to catch the golden particles which were washed down from Mount Caucasus.

It is believed by some commentators on the Bible, that the Ophir to which Solomon, who lived about a thousand years before the Christian era, sent large fleets, was Malacca, or, as others have it, the West Coast of India, where the recent gold discoveries have been made in what is now called the Wynaad district, or again, on the Mozambique Coast of Africa. These ships were managed by Tyrian mariners who were the most expert of the day; yet, for want of the mariner's compass, their navigation was performed by coasting along the shores.

Regarding the three years required to complete a

voyage to Ophir and back-supposing Ophir to be Malacca the ignorance of navigation and the frail nature of the vessels put a direct voyage out of the question, and Ophir could have been reached only by coasting along the shores of Arabia, afterwards keeping along that of Mekran, and finally following both sides of the peninsula of Hindostan. The following calculation has been made:

MILES.

From Ezion-geber, or Dhahab, pursuing the windings of the coast, the western side of Arabia gives a distance of 1206 The southern side of the Peninsula to the coast of Persia, at

At the rate of about twenty-five miles in twenty-four hours, this would occupy 313 days, which, with the addition of the Sabbaths, forty-four days, and other halts, as rests, at intervals of about ten days, say thirty-one, would make the outward voyage to the coast of Sumatra quite 388 days; and this is exclusive of detention from bad weather, which must have occurred frequently, especially during the monsoons, for assuredly such frail barks could not venture to proceed, excepting at the commencement or towards the termination of these periodical winds. This applies more particularly to the Red Sea, for outside of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and again, along the coasts of Mekran and the western shore of India, the only resource would be to haul up the flotilla until the strength of the gale were passed. It is difficult to estimate the time lost in consequence of these delays, outward and homeward; but as a monsoon would