444 THE PROGRESS OE MARITIME DISCOVER?. 



that their date must have been very remote; as, according to the 

 accounts which Herodotus received from the priests, the founda- 

 tion of Tyre took place thirty centuries before the Christian era. 



Long before the expedition of the Argonauts, the Phoenicians 

 had already founded colonies on the Bithynian coast of the 

 Black Sea (Pronectus, Bithynium) ; and that at a very early time 

 they must have steered through the Straits of. Grades into the 

 Atlantic is proved by the fact, that, as far back as the eleventh 

 century before Christ, they founded the towns of Grades and 

 Tartessus on the western coast of Southern Spain. Penetrating 

 farther and farther to the north, they discovered Britain, where 

 they established their 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 beyond the 

 tropic ; and, 2000 years before Vasco de Grama, Phoenician 

 mariners are said to have circumnavigated that continent, for 

 Herodotus relates that a Tyrian fleet, fitted out by Necho II., 

 Pharaoh of Egypt(611 — 595 B.C.), sailed from a port in theEed 

 Sea, doubled the southern promontory of Africa, and, after a 

 voyage of three years, returned through the Straits of Grades 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 per- 

 formed 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 settlement 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 5° north of the line. During day- 

 time 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 Phoenicians, as the summit 

 of the Peak of Teneriffe is visible from the heights of Cape 

 Bojador. 



