ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 125 



wards to the Cassiterides where they obtained tin, and to the Prussian 

 coast from whence they brought amber; and southwards, past Ma- 

 deira, to the Cape de Verde Islands. They visited, among other 

 places, the Canaries, and were struck by the appearance of the lofty 

 Peak of Teneriffe, enhanced by its rising immediately from the sea. 

 Through the colonies which they sent to Greece, and especially 

 through that which came under Cadmus to Boaotia, the notice of 

 this mountain rising high above the region of clouds, and of the 

 ( Fortunate Islands/ adorned with fruits of every kind, and espe- 

 cially with the golden orange, spread into Greece. Here the tradi- 

 tion was propagated by the songs of the bards, and thus reached 

 Homer. He speaks in the Odyssey (i. 52) of an e Atlas who knows 

 all the depths of the sea, and who supports the great pillafs which 

 divide heaven and earth from each other.' He speaks, too, in the 

 Iliad, of the Elysian fields, which he describes as a lovely land in 

 the west. (II. iv. 561.) Hesiod expresses himself in a similar 

 manner respecting Atlas, whom he makes a neighbor of the nymphs, 

 the daughters of Hesperus. (Theog. v. 517.) He calls the Ely- 

 sian fields, which he places at the western limit of the earth, the 

 Islands of the Blest. (Op. et dies, v. 167.) Later poets have 

 added further embellishments to these myths of Atlas, of the Hes- 

 perides, their golden apples, and the Islands of the Blest, assigned 

 as the dwelling-place of the virtuous after death ; and have combined 

 with them the expeditions of the Tyrian god of trade, Melicertes 

 (the Grecian Hercules). 



"The Greeks only began at a very late date to rival the Phoeni- 

 cians and Carthaginians in navigation. They visited the coasts of the 

 Atlantic, it is true, but never appear to have penetrated far into the 

 ocean. I doubt whether they ever saw the Canaries and the Peak of 

 Tenerifib. They believed that Atlas, which their poets and legends 

 described as a very high mountain placed at the western limit of the 

 earth, must be sought on the west coast of Africa. It was placed 

 there also by their later geographers, Strabo, Ptolemy, and others. 

 As there is not any single mountain distinguished by its elevation 

 in north-western Africa, the true situation of Mount Atlas has been 

 a subject of perplexity; and it has been sought, sometimes on the 

 coast, sometimes in the interior, sometimes near the Mediterranean, 



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