EARLY VOYAGES OP DISCOVERY. 44> 



antiquity. This far-wandering philosopher, who lived about 330 

 years before Christ, had visited all the coasts of Europe, from 

 the mouths of the Tanais or Don to the shores of Ultima Thule, 

 which, according to Leopold von Buch, was not Iceland, nor 

 Feroe, nor Orcadia, but the Norwegian coast. His narrative 

 first made the Greeks acquainted with North-western Europe, 

 and remained for a long time their only geographical guide to 

 those hyperborean lands. 



While the horizon of the Greeks was thus considerably ex- 

 panding towards the regions of the setting sun, the conquests of 

 Alexander opened to them a new world in the distant Orient. 

 Greek navigators now for the first time unfurled their sails on 

 the Indian Ocean. The Macedonian, desirous not only of sub- 

 duing Asia but of firmly attaching it to the nations of the 

 Mediterranean by the bonds of mutual interest, and hoping by 

 this means to consolidate his vast conquests, sent a fleet under 

 the command of Nearchus, from the mouths of the Indus to the 

 head of the Persian Gulf, to establish if possible a new road for 

 a regular commercial intercourse between India and Mesopo- 

 tamia. The performance of this voyage was reckoned by the 

 conqueror one of the most glorious events of his reign, but it 

 may serve as a proof of the slowness of ancient navigation, that 

 Nearchus took ten months to perform a journey which one of 

 our steamers might easily accomplish in five days. 



After the disruption of the Macedonian empire, the circle of 

 the Greek discoveries in the Indian Ocean was widened by the 

 enterprising spirit of the Seleucidse and Ptolemies. Seleucus 

 Nicator is said to have penetrated to the mouths of the Ganges, 

 and the fleets of the Egyptian kings sailed round the peninsula 

 of Hindostan and discovered the coasts of Taprobane or Ceylon, 

 the spicy odours of whose cinnamon-groves are said to be wafted 

 far out to sea, so that — 



'■ for many a league, 

 Pleased with the grateful scent, old Ocean smiles." 



But now came the time when earth-ruling Eome called the 

 whole civilised world her own, and her victorious eagles expanded 

 their triumphant wings from the Eed Sea to the coasts of the 

 Northern Ocean. What discoveries might not have been ex- 

 pected from such a power, if the Eomans had possessed but one 



