448 THE PEOGEESS OF MAEITIME DISCOVEEY. 



tithe of the maritime spirit of conquered Carthage? But even 

 this military empire contributed something to the enlargement 

 of maritime knowledge. Under the reign of Augustus a Eoman 

 fleet sailed round the promontory of Skagen, discovered about 

 sixteen years after the birth of Christ the Island of Fionia or 

 Fiinen, and is even supposed to have reached the entrance of the 

 Grulf of Finland. In the year 84 i.e. Julius Agricola, the 

 conqueror of Britain, sailed for the first time round Scotland, and 

 discovered the Orcadian Isles. 



In Pliny's time the real magnitude of the earth was still so im- 

 perfectly known that, according to the calculations of that great 

 though rather over-credulous naturalist, Europe occupied the 

 third part, Asia only the fourth, and Africa about the fifth of its 

 whole extent. 



The geographer Ptolemy, who lived about the middle' of 

 the second century, under the reigns of Hadrian and Marcus 

 Aurelius, describes the limits of the earth as far as they were 

 known in his time. To the west, the coast of Africa had been 

 explored as far as Cape Juby; and the Fortunate Islands or Hes- 

 perides, the present Canaries, rose from the ocean as the last 

 lands towards the setting sun. 



To the north discovery had reached as far as the Shetland 

 Isles, and the promontory Perispa at the entrance of the Grulf of 

 Finland ; while on the east coast of Africa Cape Brava formed 

 the ultimate boundary of the known world. Soon after 

 Ptolemy's time the whole coast of Malacca (Aurea Ghersonesus) 

 and the Siamese Sea, as far as the Cape of Cambogia (Notium 

 promontormm), was explored, and tbe Eomans even appear to 

 have had some knowledge of the great islands of the Indian 

 archipelago, Java, Sumatra, and Borneo. 



And yet, notwithstanding all this progress towards the East, it 

 may well be asked whether the Phoenicians had not embraced a 

 wider horizon than the Eomans in the full zenith of their fortunes. 

 Even though we reject the circumnavigation of Africa under 

 Necho, and the discovery of America by Punic navigators, as not 

 fully proved or fabulous, it is quite certain that they had explored 

 the west coast of Africa to a much greater extent than the Eomans, 

 and extremely probable that they knew at least as much of the 

 lands which bound the Indian Ocean. But, as from a narrow- 



