ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 145 



towns on the Mauritaniaii coasts of the Atlantic. They 

 sailed along those coasts northwards to the Cassiterides where 

 they obtained tin, and to the Prussian coast from whence 

 they brought amber ; and southwards, past Madeira, to the 

 Cape de Yerde Islands. They visited, among other places, 

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

 Peak of Teneriife, 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 

 Bceotia, the notice of this mountain rising high above the 

 region of clouds, and of the " Fortunate Islands/' adorned 

 with fruits of every kind, and especially with the golden 

 orange, spread into Greece. Here the tradition was propa- 

 gated by the songs of the bards, and thus reached Homer. 

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

 all the depths of the sea, and who suppo.ts the great pillars 

 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, 

 who he makes a neighbour of the nymphs the daughters of 

 Hesperus. (Theog. .517.) He calls the Elysian 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 Hesperides, 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). 



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