164 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



dawn of history we find several of the more civihsed nations 

 gradually extending their borders, and, though records of their 

 geographical knowledge do not exist, we may feel assured that 

 traditional information was being accumulated concerning 

 local areas. 



Geographical knowledge among primitive races is always 

 circumscribed, and essentially local, and we have no glimpse 

 of any considerable maritime discoveries of any extended area, 

 or of any journeys of exploration, until we come to the time 

 when the Phoenicians spread along the shores of the Mediter- 

 ranean. Before this time they are said by Pliny to have 

 voyaged from island to island in their original abodes within 

 the Persian Gulf by means of rafts.''' 



Tradition, as well as the earliest records, represent this 

 people as clever navigators long before the oldest Greek or 

 Hebrew records. They are generally supposed to have fully 

 explored the Erythrgean Sea before they ventured on ths 

 waters of the Mediterranean. The 27th chapter of Ezekiel 

 shows how the trade of the Levant was in their hands ; and 

 then, having traversed the Mediterranean and made them- 

 selves masters of the commerce of the day, they passed out 

 into the waters of the Great Sea through the Pillars of 

 Hercules, and founded Tartessus as a base for future voyages. 



At a later date they went further afield ; but a writer about 

 twenty years ago tried to prove in an elaborate paper that the 

 Phoenicians had reached Central America by way of the north 

 of Australia and Easter Island,! and many similar attempts 

 have been made to extend their voyages to parts of the 

 American Continent. They sailed boldly to the Canaries, and 

 a passage in Theophrastus| seems to indicate that the curious 

 patches ot floating seaweed known as the Sargasso Sea were 

 known to the ancients. The Phoenicians steered during the 

 night by a star in the Little Bear, which was called by the 

 Greeks in after-times the Phoenician star. The course steered 

 was, however, probably never very far from land. When the 

 Greeks in their turn became a maritime power they directed 

 their course by a position of the constellation of the Great 

 Bear, until, in the time of Thales, they adopted the Little 

 Bear as their guide. 



The knowledge of places, currents, dangers, winds, and 

 other cosmographical details must have been handed down by 

 tradition from one generation of sailors to another, and the 

 knowledge received by the Greeks when the Greek civilisation 



* Pliny, Hist. Nat., vii., 56. 



f Gaffarel, " Compte Kendu du 1''' Congres des Americanistes,' 

 Nancy, 1875. 



X Theop., Hist. Plant., iv., G, 7. 



