129 



progress, mans treasury, the source of the increase of man's 

 wealth. Navigation by stored food and the little pointer 

 teas made safe and pleasant." 



This passage occurs several times in the inscription. 

 The little pointer and the stored food are described as the 

 means by which the three western islands had been dis- 

 covered. 



The events of former voyages are described very em- 

 phatically: on one occasion, it appears, the ships had gone 

 so far north that the water skins had been frozen and burst, 

 and they fell in with what they supposed to be land, but 

 found, on examination, to their great consternation it was 

 only ice. 



They proceeded with cautious anxiety by means of the 

 sun by day and the seven (rectco pe, ursa major) by night ; 

 and at length saw the land of the three islands; on the first 

 of which they saw sheep. 



The concluding passage of the seventh table reminds 

 the Phoenicians, (for although these people were certainly 

 resident in Italy, they are throughout called PUNI), that 

 the island country which had been discovered would form 

 a noble country for trade, protected from hostile aggression 

 by the sea ; and might hereafter become an asylum (in case 

 their own country should be invaded and conquered by an 

 enemy of robbing people) to which they might retire in their 

 ships, and where their friends and colonists would receive 

 them with joy and gratitude in return for the benefits they 

 had conferred upon them. 



In the last paragraph we are informed that the inscrip- 

 tion was written after three hundred years from the great 

 subterraneous noise and commotion, or the earthquake. 



Of the former unsuccessful attempts to decipher these 

 very interesting inscriptions, Sir William Betham referred 

 to that of Father Gori, published with afac simile, and that 



