8 THE OCEAN 



and to return to the Mediterranean by the 

 Atlantic. Whether this voyage was accom- 

 phshed or not, the Phoenicians appear to have 

 reached the southern hemisphere, for they 

 reported that at their most southerly point 

 they had the sun on their right hand — a 

 statement that could hardly have been 

 invented, and was of course true if they 

 rounded Africa. 



It was a great event in the history of 

 oceanography and of the world when, in the 

 fourth century before our era, the Greek, 

 Pytheas, burst into the Atlantic with his 

 ships, and sailed as far north as the coasts of 

 Great Britain. It was a similarly great 

 event when Hippalus, about the first century 

 before our era, discovered the monsoon winds 

 of the Indian Ocean, for after that coast 

 routes were abandoned, and voyages of six 

 months' duration across the open ocean were 

 made to the coasts of India. 



The thirty years between 1492 and 1522 are 

 ever memorable for the great advance made 

 in our knowledge of the surface of the earth. 

 Within this period Columbus sailed across 

 the Atlantic to America, Da Gama rounded 

 the Cape of Good Hope and reached India, 

 and the survivors of Magellan's expedition 

 in one of his ships completed the first circum- 

 navigation of the globe — a whole hemisphere 



