APPENDIX.] WEST INDIES. 115 



" Asia. Pharaoh Neco, king of Egypt,* made this manifest. 

 " After he had desisted from his project of digging a canal from 

 " the Nile to the Arabian gulph, he furnished a body of Phe- 

 " nicians with ships, commanding them to enter the northern 

 " sea by the pillars of Hercules ; and sail back by that route to 

 " Egypt. The Phenicians therefore sailing from the Red sea 

 "navigated the southern ocean: At the end of autumn they 

 " anchored, and going ashore sowed the ground as those who 

 " make a Libyan voyage always do, -and staid the harvest. 

 " Having cut the corn, they sailed. Thus two years having 

 " elapsed, they returned to Egypt, passing by the pillars of 

 " Hercules; and they reported a circumstance which to me is 

 " not credible, though it may gain belief from others, that 

 " sailing round Libya they had the sun on the right ."f 



Notwithstanding the doubts entertained by Dr. Robertson 

 respecting this account, I perceive in it such evidence of truth, 

 as, to my own mind, affords entire conviction How could it 

 have been known, unless from actual observation, that Africa, 

 towards the south, was encompassed by the sea? The caution 



* There were two kings of Egypt of this name. The second who is 

 generally supposed to have ordered the circumnavigation of Africa, was 

 slain in battle by the Assyrians, I think under the command of Nebu- 

 chadnezzar j but an ambiguous phrase in Herodotus, seems rather to 

 point out the elder Neco, who was contemporary with Solomon. 



f Herod. Melpomene 4z. In the former editions of my work, some 

 mistakes were made in the translation of this passage, which were point- 

 ed out to me by the kindness of Henry James Pye, Esq. the Poet Laureat, 

 who assures me, that he has always considered the passage in question as 

 an undeniable proof of the early doubling the cape of Good Hope. It was 

 the opinion of Eratosthenes the cosmographer, that the outer sea flowed 

 round the earth, and that the Western or Atlantic, and Red seas, were 

 but one ocean. Vide Strabo. B. i. p. 38. See also the same author, 

 B.I. p. 18, where it is asserted, that Homer's Menelaus circumnavi- 

 gated Africa from Gades to IndU, 



