130 PRINCIPAL EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY 0V THE 



links. It is probable that, from the foundations of Tartessus 

 and Utica by the Phoenicians, fully 2000 years elapsed before 

 the discovery of America by the northern route, i. e. before 

 Eric Eauda crossed the ocean to Greenland (an event which 

 was soon followed by voyages to North Carolina), and 2500 

 years before its discovery by the south western route taken 

 by Columbus from a point of departure near the ancient 

 Phoenician Gadeira. 



In following out that generalisation of ideas which be- 

 longs to the object of this work, I have here regarded the 

 discovery of a group of islands situated only 168 geogra- 

 phical miles from the coast of Africa, as the first link in a 

 long series of efforts tending in the same direction, and 

 have not connected it with the poetic fiction, sprung from 

 the inmost depths of the mind, of the Elysium, the Islands 

 of the Blest, placed in the far ocean at earth's extremest 

 bounds, and warmed by the near presence of the disk of the 

 setting sun. In this remotest distance was placed the seat 

 of all the charms of life, and of the most precious produc- 

 tions of the earth; ( 174 ) but as the Greeks' knowledge of the 

 Mediterranean extended, the ideal land, the geographical 

 mythus of the Elysium, was moved farther and farther to the 

 west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules. True geographical 

 knowledge, the discoveries of the Phoenicians, of the epoch 

 of which we have no certain information, did not probably 

 first originate the mythus of the Fortunate Islands ; but the 

 application was made afterwards, and the geographical dis 

 covery did but embody the picture which the imagination 

 had formed, and of which it became, as it were, the sub- 

 gtratum. 



Later writers, such as the unknown compiler of the 



