34 ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE OF AFRICA. 



The next expedition on record was made under less 

 pleasing auspices. Sataspes, a Persian nobleman, had 

 been condemned by Xerxes to crucifixion, on account of 

 some crime of which he had been guilty ; but his mother, 

 by earnest entreaty, obtained a commutation of the sen- 

 tence into one which she represented as still more severe, 

 —that of sailing round Africa. Under this hea\y neces- 

 sity, Sataspes coasted along the Mediterranean, passed the 

 western point of the continent, and began a southward 

 course. But he who undertook to explore this vast country 

 with no interest in the subject, buoyed up by no gay en- 

 thusiasm, and urged only by the fear of death behind, was 

 ill prepared for achieving so mighty an enterprise. Satas- 

 pes sailed southward for a considerable space ; but when 

 he saw the Atlantic waves beating against the dreary shore 

 of the Sahara, that scene of frequent and terrible ship 

 wreck, it probably appeared to him that any ordinary form 

 of death was preferable to the one which here menaced 

 him. He returned, and presented himself before Xerxes, 

 giving a doleful description of the hardships which he had 

 encountered, declaring that the ship at last stood still of 

 itself, and could by no exertion be made to proceed. That 

 proud monarch, refusing to listen to such an explanation, 

 ordered the original sentence to be immediately executed. 

 Such appears to have been the only African voyage under- 

 taken by the Persians, to whom the sea was an object of 

 aversion, and even of superstitious dread. 



Carthage, the greatest maritime and commercial state 

 of antiquity, and which considered Africa and the Atlantic 

 coast as her peculiar domain, must have made several ex- 

 ploratory voyages before she could establish those extensive 

 connexions upon which her trade was founded. Of all 

 such attempts, however, the record of one only remains. 

 It consisted of an expedition on a very large scale, sent out, 

 about 570 years before the Christian era, for the joint pur- 

 poses of colonization and discovery, under an admiral 

 named Hanno. He carried with him, in sixty large vessels, 

 emigrants of both sexes to the number of thirty thousand. 

 At the distance of two days' sail beyond the Pillars of Her- 

 cules, the Carthaginians founded the city of Thymioterium, 

 and afterward, on the wooded promontory of Soloeis, 

 erected a stately temple to Neptune. They then buiU 



