APPENDIX] WEST INDIES. 113 



coast, on the Atlantic ocean, were made both by the Pheni- 

 cians and Egytians, many hundred years before the Christian 

 era. It is true, that almost all the accounts which have been 

 transmitted to us in profane history of those expeditions, are 

 involved in obscurity, and intermixed with absurdity and fable; 

 but it is the business of philosophy to separate, as much as 

 possible, truth from falsehood; and not hastily to conclude, 

 because some circumstances are extravagant, that all are with- 

 out foundation. We know from indisputable authority, that 

 the Phenicians discovered the Azores, and visited ev r en our 

 own island before the Trojan war.f That their successors the 

 Carthaginians, were not less distinguished for the spirit of ni- 

 val enterprize, we may conclude from the celebrated expedi- 

 tion of Hanno;J who about two hundred and fifty years be- 

 fore the birch of our Saviour, sailed along the African coast, 

 until he came within five degrees of the line. It was the Ca- 

 thaginians who discovered the Canary islands, and it appears 

 from the testimony of Pliny, that they found in those islands, 

 the ruins of great buildings, (vestigia Edijicioruw) , a proof 

 that they had been well inhabited in periods of which history 

 is silent. 



f- Procopius, secretary to Belisariolis in the time of Justinian, men- 

 tions in his Vandalica, book ii. that there were then standing in Africa 

 Tingitana, (Tangier), two columns creeled by the Chananites that fled 

 from Joshua the son of Nun. Eusebius also writes, that those Cha- 

 nanites which were driven out by the Israelites conducted colonies to Tri- 

 poli, in Africa. (Bohart in Canaan, cap. xxiv.) that they navigated 

 the western ocean (cap. xxxvi.) and were in Gaul and Britain (cap. xlii.) 

 See also Sammes's Phenician History of Britain. 



1 This was published with Stephanus de Urbibus, by Berkley, in 

 1688, and in the minor geographers at Oxford. I believe it was first 

 published in Greek, by Sigismund Gelenius, who died in 1554. 



Lib. vi. c. xxxii. & Fortunatis Insulis. 



Vol. I. p 



