PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 129 



the same way that the Phocsean Massilians brought the 

 British tin across France to the Rhone, the amber was con- 

 veyed from people to people through Germany, and by the 

 Celts on either declivity of the Alps to the Padus, and 

 through Pannonia to the Borysthenes. It was this inland 

 traffic which first brought the coasts of the northern ocean 

 into connection with the Euxine and the Adriatic. 



Phoenicians from Carthage, and probably from the settle- 

 ments of Tartessus and Gades which were founded two 

 centuries earlier, visited an important part of the northwest 

 coastof Africa, extendingmuchbeyondCape Bojador; although 

 the Chretes of Hanno is neither the Chremetes of Aristotle's 

 Meteorology, nor yet our Gambia. ( 17%2 ) This was the locality 

 of the many towns of Tyrians (according to Strabo even as 

 many as 300,) which were destroyed by Pharusians and 

 Nigritians. ( 173 ) Among them, Cerne (DicuiPs Gaulea, 

 according to Letronne) was the principal naval station and 

 chief staple for the settlements on the coast. In the west 

 the Canary islands and the Azores (which latter the son of 

 Columbus, Don Fernando, considered to be the first Cas- 

 siterides discovered by the Carthaginians), and in the north 

 the Orkneys, the Faroe islands, and Iceland, became the in- 

 termediary stations of transit to the New Continent. They 

 indicate the two paths by which the European portion of 

 mankind became acquainted with Central and North America. 

 This consideration gives to the question of the period when 

 Porto Santo, Madeira, and the Canaries were first known to 

 the Phoenicians, either of the mother country or of the cities 

 planted in Iberia and Africa, a great, I might almost say a 

 universal, importance in the history of the world. In a 

 long protracted chain of events we love to trace the first 



