1 8 A WONDERER UNDER SEA 



sent an expedition manned by Phcenicians down the Red 

 Sea and along the eastern coast of Africa. Three years 

 later they returned through the Pillars of Hercules, hav- 

 ing circumnavigated the vast Dark Continent. The His- 

 torian of Halicarnassus says that every year these toiling 

 voyagers stopped to sow and harvest a crop of wheat 

 before going on; they reported that during part of their 

 journey they had the sun on the right hand — that is, to 

 the north — and Herodotus remarks that for his part he 

 finds this impossible to believe. The authenticity of this 

 voyage has been long doubted, but some recent archeo- 

 logical evidence seems to support it, and certainly the 

 observation as to the sun's position — that very point which 

 Herodotus challenged — is a convincing piece of evidence. 

 If this circumnavigation was really accomplished, it was 

 an amazing feat that waited for two thousand years to be 

 repeated by Vasco da Gama. 



Somewhere about this period the Carthaginian admiral 

 Hanno conducted a fleet of sixty vessels on one of the re- 

 markable voyages of the world. This was a colonizing 

 enterprise as well as an exploring expedition, and men, 

 women, and children accompanied him to found Cartha- 

 ginian towns on the unknown shores of Africa. He went 

 through the Pillars of Hercules and down the western 

 coast, as far as the country that we know as Sierra Leone. 

 All the way new wonders dawned upon him and fresh 

 terrors awed his men. All day the land lay silent under a 

 burning sun, but at night the sound of gongs and drums 



