444 THE PROGRESS OF MARITIME DISCOVERY. 
that their date must have been very remote; as, according to the 
accounts which Herodotus received from the priests, the founda- 
tion of Tyre took place thirty centuries before the Christian era. 
Long before the expedition of the Argonauts, the Phcenicians 
had already founded colonies on the Bithynian coast of the 
Black Sea (Pronectus, Bithynium); and that at a very early time 
they must have steered through the Straits of Gades into the 
Atlantic is proved by the fact, that, as far back as the eleventh 
century before Christ, they founded the towns of Gades and 
Tartessus on the western coast of Southern Spain. Penetrating 
farther and farther to the north, they discovered Britain, where 
they established their chief station on the Scilly Isles, at present 
so insignificant and obscure, and even visited the barbarous shores 
of the Baltic in quest of the costly amber. They planted their 
colonies along the north-west coast of Africa, even beyond the 
tropic; and, 2000 years before Vasco de Gama, Phcenician 
mariners are said to have circumnavigated that continent, for 
Herodotus relates that a Tyrian fleet, fitted out by Necho IL., 
Pharaoh of Egypt (611— 595 B.c.), sailed from a port in the Red 
Sea, doubled the southern promontory of Africa, and, after a 
voyage of three years, returned through the Straits of Gades to 
the mouth of the Nile. 
Less wonderful, but resting on better historical proof, is the 
celebrated voyage of discovery to the south which Hanno per- 
formed by command of the senate of Carthage, the greatest of 
all Phoenician colonies, eclipsing even the fame of Tyre itself. 
Sailing from Cerne, the principal Phoenician settlement on the 
western coast of Africa, and which was probably situated on the 
present island of Arguin, he reached, after a navigation of 
seventeen days, a promontory which he called the West Horn 
(probably Cape Palmas), and then advanced to another cape, to 
which he gave the name of South Horn, and which is manifestly 
Cape de Tres Puntas, only 5° north of the line. During day- 
time the deepest silence reigned along the newly discovered 
coast, but after sunset countless fires were seen burning along 
the banks of the rivers, and the air resounded with music and 
song, the black natives spending, as they still do now, the hours 
of the cool night in festive joy. Most likely the Canary 
Islands were also known to the Pheenicians, as the summit 
of the Peak of Teneriffe is visible from the heights of Cape 
Bojador. 
