Hamilton. — On our Knoiolcdge of the Oceanic Areas. 165 



developed must have included many observations and deduc- 

 tions based upon experience of solid value and importance. 

 Yet the brilliant intellects of the Greek philosophers did not 

 construct any very creditable theoretical conception of the 

 scientific prolDlems of the ocean. Together with the facts, no 

 doubt, a number of " travellers' tales" and myths had esta- 

 blished themselves; but, as Humboldt says, " Popular myths 

 mixed with history and geography do not belong altogether to 

 the ideal world. If vagueness be one of their characteristics, 

 if the symbols which cover the reality be wrapped in a veil 

 more or less thick, they show, nevertheless, the dawn of cos- 

 mography. The statements of primitive history and geography 

 are not entirely ingenious fictions ; the opinions which have 

 been formed about the actual world are reflected in them." 



Putting aside, as poetic accretions round the nature-myth 

 of the history of the Golden Fleece, the classic accounts of the 

 voyage of the Argonauts, we come to the poems of the Trojan 

 cycle, and in the Homeric works we find the conceptions 

 of the Greeks at that time as to the Cosmos. He describes 

 the form of the earth as being like the shield of Achilles, with 

 the river Oceanus for its rim." Mr. Gladstone considers the 

 shape of the shield to have been an oval or a parallelogram. 

 The conception of a great circumfluent river, he thinks, was 

 probably founded on a combination of a double set of reports : 

 the one of great currents setting into the Thalassa or Medi- 

 terranean Sea, and seeming to feed it, such as those of Yeni- 

 kale, the Bosphorus, Gibraltar ; the other of outer waters, 

 such as the Caspian, the Persian Gulf, and probably the Ked 

 Sea. As the external ocean-river served as the support to the 

 celestial vault, we must conclude that these conceptions of tlie 

 world were derived from Oriental sources. These ideas of an 

 internal sea, with archipelagoes and a surrounding ocean-river, 

 were perpetuated among the people down to the time of 

 Hecatoeus. It is not long, however, before we hear of lands 

 beyond the outer ocean, and in Hesiod we may probably see 

 the first germ of the Atlantis myth, nov;' to be rediscussed 

 by the publicatioa of Plongeon's work in Central America. 



With the rise of the Grecian power we find mercantile 

 relations opened up with Egypt, the " China" of the civilised 

 world at that period; and about 630 B.c.,f Herodotus tells 

 us, the western portion of the Mediterranean, with the great 

 Tyrian port of Tartessus, in the south of Spain, became known 

 to the Greeks. The story of the founding of Massilia not 

 only shows the noble sacrifices made by the Phoceans, who 

 abandoned their city rather than submit to the conqueror's 

 yoke, but shows that the voyage of nearly the whole length 



* II., xix., 374. t Herd., iv,, 152. 



