32 ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE OF AFRICA. 



were unfaTourable to maritime enterprises ; yet Necho, 

 endowed with the spirit of a great man, which raised him 

 superior to the age in which he lived, eagerly sought the 

 solution of the grand mystery that involved the form and 

 termination of Africa. He was obliged to employ, not na- 

 tive, but Phoenician navigators, of whose proceedings He- 

 rodotus received an account from the Egyptian priests. 

 Proceeding down the Red Sea, they entered the Indian 

 Ocean ; and in a voyage of three years made the complete 

 circuit of the continent, passing through the Pillars of Her- 

 cules (Straits ^of Gibraltar), and up the Mediterranean to 

 Egypt. They related, that in the course of this very long 

 voyage they had repeatedly drawn their boats on land, 

 sowed grain in a favourable place and season, waited till 

 the crop grew and ripened under the influence of a tropical 

 heat, then reaped it, and continued their progress. They 

 added, that in passing the most southern coast of Africa, 

 they were surprised by observing the sun on their right 

 hand, — a statement which the historian himself rejects as 

 impossible. Such is all the account transmitted to us of this 

 extraordinary voyage, which has given rise to a learned 

 and voluminous controversy. Rennel in his Geography 

 of Herodotus, Vincent in his Periplus of the Erythrean 

 Sea, and Gosselin in his Geography of the Ancients, 

 have exhausted almost every possible argument ; the 

 first in its favour, the two latter to prove that it never did 

 or could take place. To these last it appears impossible 

 that ancient mariners, with their slender resources, creeping 

 in little row-galleys along the coast, steering without the 

 aid of the compass, and unable to venture to any distance 

 from land, could have performed so immense a circuit. 

 All antiquity, they observe, continued to grope in doubt 

 and darkness respecting the form of Africa, which was 

 only fully established several thousand years afterward by 

 the expedition of Gama. On the other side. Major Rennel 

 urges, that, immense as this voyage was, it was entirely 

 along a coast of which the navigators never required to 

 lose sight even for a day ; that their small barks were well 

 equipped, and better fitted than ours for coasting naviga- 

 tion ; and which, drawing very little water, could be kept 

 quite close to the shore, and even be drawn on land, when- 

 ever an emergency made this step indispensable. The 



