70 PYTHEAS. 



which would hardly have occurred to any one who had not 

 witnessed the actual phenomenon. 



" Fourthly," says Sir C. Lewis, " Pytheas affirmed that in 

 returning from his great northern voyage, in which he first 

 obtained accounts of the remote island of Thule, he had sailed 

 along the entire coast of the ocean between Gadeira and the 

 Tanais ; that is from Cadiz, round Spain, Gaul, Germany, and 

 Scythia, to the river Don, which was considered by the 

 ancients as the boundary of Europe and Asia. This state- 

 ment furnishes an additional proof of the mendacity of 

 Pytheas, because it is founded on the belief, received in his 

 time, that Europe did not project far to the North, and that 

 the Ocean swept along its shores to the north of Scythia and 

 India." Pytheas, however, did not, in reality, lay himself 

 open to any such accusation ; the passage on which Sir C. 

 Lewis relies only affirms that after his return from the north 

 (eVaveA#wv evflevSe) he travelled along the whole coast of Europe 

 from Cadiz to the Don. This, which evidently refers to a 

 second journey, is a very different statement, and one which 

 I see no reason to doubt. 



According to Geminus, Pytheas in his northern journey 

 reached a place where the nights were only two or three 

 hours long, and he adds that the Barbarians took him to 

 see the place where the sun slept. These two statements 

 seem to point to Donnas as the northernmost point of his 

 voyage. Here the shortest night is two hours long, but 

 behind the town is a mountain, the top of which is the 

 southernmost point from which the midnight sun can be 

 seen. The inhabitants took Professor Nilsson here in the 

 year 1816, to show him the place where the sun rested, just 

 as their predecessors may have conducted Pytheas to the 

 same spot, for the same purpose, more than 2000 years 

 before. On this subject I will only add that Pytheas was 

 no mere wanderer, but a distinguished astronomer, who with 



