134 COSMOS 



ing wnose precise period no certain tidings have come down 

 to us, did not probably give rise to this myth of the " Islands 

 of the Blessed," the application to which was made subse- 

 quently. Geographical discovery has merely embodied a phan- 

 tom of the imagination, to which it served as a substratum. 



Later writers (as an unknown compiler of the Collection oj 

 Wonderful Relations ascribed to Aristotle, who made use of 

 rimaeus, and more especially of Diodorus Siculus) have spoken 

 of " Pleasant Islands," which must be supposed to be the Ca- 

 naries, and of the great storms to which their accidental dis- 

 covery is due. It is said that " Phoenician and Carthaginian 

 vessels, which were sailing toward the settlements already 

 then founded on the coast of Libya, were driven out to sea." 

 This event is supposed to have occurred in the early period of 

 the Tyrrhenian navigation, and in that of the contest between 

 the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians and Phosnicians. Statius Sebosus 

 and the Nuraidian king Juba first gave names to the separate 

 islands, but, unfortunately, not Punic names, although undoubt- 

 edly in accordance with notices taken from Punic works. As 

 Plutarch says that Sertorius, when driven away from Spain, 

 wished to save himself and his attendants, after the loss of his 

 fleet, on a group of two Atlantic islands, ten thousand stadia 

 to the west of the mouth of the Bsetis, it has been supposed 

 that he meant to designate the two islands of Porto Santo and 

 Madeira,* which were clearly indicated by Pliny as the Pur- 



* I have treated in detail this often-contested subject, as well as the 

 passages of Diodorus (v. 19 and 20), and of the Pseudo-Aristot. (Mirab. 

 AiiscnU., cap. 85, p. 172, Bekk.), in another work {Examen Crit.. t, i., 

 p. 130-139 ; t. ii., p. 158 and 169 ; t. iii., p. 137-140). The compiiation 

 of the Mirab. Auscult. appears to have been of a date prior to the end 

 of the first Punic. war, since, in cap. 105, p. 211, it describes Sardinia 

 as under the dominion of the Carthaginians. It is also worthy of notice 

 that the wood-clad island, which is mentioned in this work, is described 

 as uninhabited (therefore not peopled by Guanches). The whole group 

 of the Canary Islands was inhabited by Guanches, but not the island of 

 Madeira, in which no inhabitants were found either by John Gonzalves 

 and Tristan Vaz in 1519, or, still earlier, by Robert Masham and Anna 

 Dorset (supposing their Crusoe-like narrative to possess a character of 

 veracity). Heeren applies the description of Diodorus to Madeira alone ; 

 yet he thinks that in the account of Festus Avienus (v. 164), who is so 

 conversant with Punic writings, he can recognize the frequent volcanic 

 earthquakes of the Peak of Teneriffe. (See Ideen uber Politik und Han- 

 del, th. ii., abth. i., 1826, s. 106.) To judge from the geographical con- 

 nection, the description of Avienus would appear to indicate a more 

 northern locality, perhaps even the Kronic Sea. (^Examen Crit., t. iii., 

 p. 138.) Ammianus Marcellinus (xxii., 15) also notices the Punic 

 sources of which Juba availed himself. Respecting the probability of 

 the Semitic origin of the appellation of the Canary Islands (the dog 



