ORDER II. BMANA. 385 



chief station on the Scilly [sles, 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 Yasco da Gama, Phoenician 

 mariners are said to have circumnavigated that continent ; for Herodotus 

 relates that a Tyrian fleet, fitted out by Necho II., Pharaoh of Egypt ((311- 

 595 15. (.'.), 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 Ilanno performed by command of 

 the senate of Carthage, the greatest of all Phoenician colonies, eclipsing even 

 the fame of Tyre itself. Sailing from Cerne, the principal Phoenician 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 anil 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 Phoenicians, 

 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 witli 

 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 lied 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 Phoenicians 



