THE MEDITEKRANEAN SEA. 243 



known are ever linked together in the human imagination. 

 The history of Hercules that curious, fertile, and still un- 

 explained source of so many Grecian and Oriental myths 

 was not unnaturally extended to this narrow egress from the 

 known sea; and the mountain columns, Calpe and Abyle, 

 became the laborum Herculis metce, the stern barrier of 

 human progress towards the west. The awe inspired by this 

 mixture of myth and reality may have been purposely aug- 

 mented by the tales of the Phoenician and other traders, 

 seeking to maintain a monopoly of that maritime traffic by 

 which they were enriched. The early voyages of discovery, 

 to which the names of Pharaoh-Necho, Scylax and Hanno 

 are severally attached, did but little to correct the mis- 

 conceptions of ancient geography in this region; and the 

 Atlantis and Hesperides, if not wholly within the domain of 

 fable, are probably only vague traces of some early discovery 

 of the Isles on the African Coast.* Even as late as Juvenal, 

 the intense thirst for gold is exemplified by the mariner 

 rushing into the mysterious ocean beyond Calpe to obtain it. 



Calpe relicta 

 Atidiet Herculeo stridentem gurgite Solem, 



That a barrier once existed between the Mediterranean 

 and Atlantic, the violent disruption of which opened the 

 present passage, was a tradition of antiquity more natural 

 and reasonable than most of the physical speculations of the 

 time. A Strait, contracted in one point to little more than 



* The wonderful scenery of the Canary Isles, if reached thus early, might 

 readily have suggested some of these legends, as Tasso has indicated in the 

 finest parts of his poem, when placing the gardens of Armida and the ' Dolce 

 prigione ' which held Einaldo captive, in one of these isles. The description 

 of the Canaries by Pliny (founded on the expedition of discovery sent thither 

 by that remarkable man Juba, Prince of Numidia), is well worthy of notice, 

 from its exact accordance with some of the most notable of their physical 

 features at this day, 



B2 



