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conjecture. But the position of this place was a matter of doubt. 
Some pointed to a paltry stream in Bzotia, in Greece; some to 
other localities. The most common explanation referred the 
epithet to a river or lake, with which the ancients were very 
imperfectly acquainted, in the centre of Libya,—their name for 
the continent of Africa. That is, the civilization of Greece, and 
thereby of the West and ourselves, had its origin in Africa. A 
very strange idea, yet perhaps not altogether devoid of foundation. 
Now turn to another difficulty, semi-mythological. Long 
before the age of Homer, and the siege of Troy, fifty of the great 
Greek chieftains had undertaken the first bold maritime adventure 
on record—called from Argo, the name of their ship, the Argo- 
nautic Expedition. The different accounts of their route are 
perfectly irreconcileable with our present geographical knowledge, 
or in fact with one another. They give us, however, what were 
the earliest notions of the Greeks as to the geography of the world, 
and the earliest of the many accounts of this voyage represent the 
sailors of the good ship Argo, as returning into the Mediterranean 
from the West of Africa by carrying their ship on their shoulders 
across Libya, until they came to Lake Triton, when they sailed 
into the. Mediterranean, and so homewards to Greece. Strange, 
yet after all, perchance true! 
The next notice which we have of the geographical knowledge 
of the ancients is found in the narrative of the adventures of 
Ulysses, as given by Homer in the Odyssey. In relating his 
wanderings, Homer has no doubt intended to display all the 
knowledge of his day in reference to distant lands. The farthest 
region to which he sends his hero, a voyage of full ten days from 
Cape Matapan, the southern extremity of Greece, is to a coast 
whose inhabitants lived on J/ofos, or the fruit of the jujube tree. 
Here his companions land for water. Three of his sailors open 
negotiations with the natives. These they find a mild, hospitable 
people, in character not unlike the South Sea Islanders—themselves 
also a race of vegetarians. The three sailors, wearied with the ten 
days’ storm, attempt to desert, and join the natives, and are with 
difficulty driven on board again by ourhero, For fear the rest should 
