262 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



Hope about two thousand years before Vasco da Gama 

 discovered it. However long these primary navigators 

 took on this prodigious voyage, or what adventures 

 they met with, we have no means of knowing ; but 

 how much richer the literature of the world would be 

 if, instead of the incessant tale of slaughter, which is 

 all we have, we could peruse the log-books of those 

 ancient pioneers ! and what would we not give to know 

 whether they met with vessels of any other, to them, 

 unknown nation ! Alas, if they did, they probably 

 made short work of them that is, if they were able. 

 It was an age remarkable for the promptitude with 

 which all strangers, and therefore potential enemies, 

 were disposed of. There were probably few com- 

 modities then less accounted of than human life. 



But, although this first circumnavigation of Africa 

 is intensely interesting, could we but get details of it 

 from the time those intrepid mariners left their port 

 of departure in the Ked Sea, until they returned to 

 Egypt via the Pillars of Hercules, it was, as far as 

 we know, fairly peaceful, except, of course, for land 

 forays. It is hardly likely that there would be any 

 naval engagements on that long voyage, at any rate 

 until nearing home, for there would be nobody to 

 fight with except one another. In considering that 

 voyage, moreover, we are striding far too much ahead, 

 and must needs retrace our steps a few hundred years 

 to the founding of the Carthaginian empire at Utica, 

 the date of which is unknown, but which appears to 

 have been about a thousand years before Christ. 

 Probably every intelligent schoolboy knows that this, 

 the first naval power of which we have any knowledge, 

 was a colony from Tyre, founded by seamen in about 



