ORDER II. BIMANA. 385 
chief station on the Scilly Isles, at present so insignificant and obscure, and 
even visited the barbarous shores of the Baltic in quest of the costly amber. 
They planted their colonies along the north-west coast of Africa, even be- 
yond the tropic ; and two thousand years before Vasco da Gama, Pheenician 
mariners are said to have circumnavigated that continent; for Herodotus 
relates that a Tyrian fleet, fitted out by Necho H., Pharaoh of Egypt (611- 
595 B. C.), sailed from a port in the Red Sea, doubled the southern prom- 
ontory of Africa, and, after a voyage of three years, returned through the 
Straits of Gades to the mouth of the Nile. 
Less wonderful, but resting on better historical proof, is the celebrated 
voyage of discovery to the south, which Hanno performed by command of 
the senate of Carthage, the greatest of all Pheenician colonies, eclipsing even 
the fame of Tyre itself. Sailing from Cerne, the principal Phonician set- 
tlement on the western coast of Africa, and which was probably situated on 
the present Island of Arguin, he reached, after a navigation of seventeen 
days, a promontory which he called the West Horn (probably Cape Palmas), 
and then advanced to another cape, to which he gave the name of South 
Horn, and which is manifestly Cape de Tres Puntas, only five degrees north 
of the line. During daytime the deepest silence reigned along the newly- 
discovered coast, but after sunset countless fires were seen burning along the 
banks of the rivers, and the air resounded with music and song, the black 
natives spending, as they still do now, the hours of the cool night in festive 
joy. Most likely the Canary Islands were also known to the Pheenicians, 
as the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe is visible from the heights of Cape 
Bojador. 
The progress of the great mariners of old in the Indian Ocean was no less 
remarkable than the extension of their Atlantic discoveries. Far beyond 
Babel-el-Mandeb their fleets sailed to Ophir, or Supara, and returned with 
rich cargoes of gold, silver, sandal-wood, jewels, ivory, apes, and peacocks, to 
the ports of Elath and Ezion-Geber, at the head of the Red Sea. These 
costly productions of the south were then transported across the Isthmus of 
Suez to Rhinocolura, the nearest port on the Mediterranean, and thence to 
Tyre, which ultimately distributed them over the whole of the known world. 
The true position of Ophir is an enigma which no learned CEdipus will 
ever solve. While some authorities place it on the east coast of Africa, 
others fix its situation, somewhere on the west coast of the Indian Penin- 
sula; and Humboldt is even of opinion that the name had only a general 
signification, and that a voyage to Ophir meant nothing more than a com- 
mercial expedition to any part of the Indian Ocean, just as at present we 
speak of a voyage to the Levant, or the West Indies. 
But whatever Ophir may have been, it is certain that the Phcenicians 
