PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 131 



w Collection of Wonderful Narrations/' which was ascribed 

 to Aristotle and of which Timseus made use, and such as 

 the still more circumstantial Diodorus Siculus, when speak- 

 ing of lovely islands, which may be supposed to be the 

 Canaries, allude to the storms which may have occa- 

 sioned their accidental discovery. Phoenician and Cartha- 

 ginian ships, it is said, sailing to the settlements already, 

 existing on the Coast of Lybia, were driven out to sea; 

 the event is placed at the early period of the Tyrrhenian 

 naval power, during the strife between the Tyrrhenian Pe- 

 lasgians and the Phoenicians. Statius Sebosus and the 

 Numidian King Juba first gave names to the different 

 islands, but unfortunately not Punic names, although cer- 

 tainly according to notices drawn from Punic books. Plu- 

 tarch having said that Sertorius, when driven out of Spain, 

 and after the loss of his fleet, thought of taking refuge 

 "in a group, consisting of only two islands, situated 

 in the Atlantic, ten thousand stadia to the west of the 

 mouth of the Betis," he has been supposed to refer to 

 the two islands of Porto Santo and Madeira, ( 175 ) indi- 

 cated not obscurely by Pliny as Purpurariae. The strong 

 current which, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, sets from 

 north west to south east, may long have prevented the 

 coast navigators from discovering the islands most distant 

 from the continent, of which only the smaller (Porto Santo) 

 was found inhabited in the fifteenth century. The curva- 

 ture of the earth would prevent the summit of the great 

 volcano of Teneriffe from being seen, even with a strong 

 refraction, by the Phoenician ships sailing along the coast of 

 the continent ; but it appears from my researches ( r/6 ) that 

 it might have been discovered from the heights near Cape 



