5 
furnished with the means of discovery, would make discoveries ; 
that, having ships, they would make voyages . . . . and gain more 
knowledge of the surface of the globe. What peasant of Thessaly 
but might have uttered such prophecies as these, who saw the Argo 
bring her heroes home, and observed to what degree the avarice 
and curiosity of his countrymen were influenced by the wealth they 
brought home and the stories which they spread.””—Hors.ey’s Ser- 
mons, vol. 2. 
Of these extracts, as replies to the Infidel, valeant quantum valere 
possunt. I hope to furnish a more decisive refutation by exhibit- 
ing proof, that Seneca founded the remarkable expressions in this 
passage upon a traditionary knowledge of a transatlantic continent, 
which had, at some remote period, been visited by navigators of the 
ancient world. 
Our ideas of the progress of naval discoveries, and of navigation 
in general among the ancients, are too much confined to the Greeks 
and Romans, among whom the impossibility of navigating the At- 
lantic beyond the Straits of Gibraltar had passed into a proverb.* 
It was by the Phoenicians and their colonies, that the art of navi- 
gation was carried to its greatest perfection ; and the spirit of com- 
merce surmounted then as it does still, obstacles which opposed an 
effectual barrier to the march of conquest. Without referring to 
the traffic of Solomon with Tarshish, (a port which some place im 
Spain, others at Ceylon) we have very full proof that the Cape of 
Good Hope was doubled by a fleet, which left a port in the Red 
Sea;+ and, after a voyage of three years, returned to Egypt by 
Gibraltar and the Mediterrenean. This fleet was navigated by 
* Pindar Olymp. 3.—Nem, 3.—Id. 4.—Ismean 4.—Juvenal Sat. 14, 280. 
+ Herod. Lib. 4. chap. 42. j 
