88 ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE OF AFRICA. 



ordered an expedition to be prepared; but Eudoxus was 

 privately warned that this treacherous prince, instead of 

 forwarding hun on his voyage, intended that his people 

 should land and leave him to perish on an uninhabited 

 island. It does not appear what motive the king could 

 have for so base a design ; however, the Greek, who had 

 better means of judging than we have, believed it and fled. 

 He made his next attempt in Spain, where he found no dif- 

 ficulty in equipping two other vessels, on board of which 

 he placed seed-corn and materials for building, that in case 

 of necessity he might land and raise a crop on a fertile 

 little island which he had observed at an advanced point of 

 his former voyage. Here, very unluckily, Posidonius, 

 Strabo's infonnant, stops short, and refers to the Spaniards 

 and Gaditanians for farther information ; but profound si- 

 lence reigns on their part, and the world probably must 

 remain for ever in darkness as to the issue of this last ex- 

 pedition. It must not be concealed, that authors of great 

 name, not excepting Strabo himself, have branded Eudoxus 

 as a decided impostor ; a reproach which many of the most 

 eminent discoverers have been destined to bear. This 

 geographer is a most merciless critic ; but though his au- 

 thorities are admitted to be good, his long objections, drawn 

 from the internal evidence, do not appear at all conclusive. 

 Antiquity has put sundr}^ fables into the narrative of Eu- 

 doxus, by which his reputation has severely suffered. Ac- 

 cording to certain works, he pretended to have really made 

 the circuit of Africa; to have visited some nations that 

 were dumb ; others without tongues ; and one people who 

 had no mouths, but received all their food by the nose. 

 These are the wild exaggerations which, in a credulous age, 

 a story undergoes in passing from one person to another. 

 The descriptions of Strabo, collected from the best sources, 

 with severe and even malignant scrutiny, contain none of 

 those suspicious wonders, nor any event which at all ex- 

 ceeds the common course of nature. 



A line of navigation along the eastern coast of Africa is 

 described in a work of later date, written apparently after 

 the establishment of the Roman power in Egypt. It is 

 termed the Periplus of the Erythrean or Indian Sea, by an 

 author whose name was Arrian ; but it comprises not so 

 much the result of any individual adventure as a general 



