247 



cians, had some knowledge* of the Peak of Te^ 

 neriffe. In the time of Plato and Aristotle, 

 vague notions of it had reached the Greeks, who 

 considered the whole of the coast of Africa, be- 

 yond the Pillars of Hercules, as thrown into dis- 

 order by the fire of volcanoes^. The Place of 

 the Blessed, which was sought first in the north, 

 beyond the Riphean mountains, among the Hy- 

 perboreans J, and then to the south of Cyre- 

 naica, was situate in regions that were consi- 

 dered as toward the west, where the world 



* See a treatise by Mr. Ideler, inserted in my Views of 

 Nature, t. i, p. 141; and Gosselin, Recherches, t; i, p. 135 — 

 159. One of the most distinguished writers of Germany, 

 Mr. Heeren, thinks, that the Fortunate Islands of Diodorus 

 Siculus were Madeira and Porto Santo. Afrika, t. i, p. 124. 

 Malte-Brun, Histoire de la Geographie, p. 76, 90, et 194. 



+ Arist. Mirab. Auscult. (ed, Casaub.) p. 704. Solinus says 

 of Atlas, vertex semper nivalis lucet nocturnis ignibus ; but this 

 Atlas, which, like the mountain Meru of the Hindoos, ex- 

 hibits a mixture of true ideas and mythological fictions, was 

 not situate in one of the islands of the Hesperides, as the 

 Abbe Vieyra admits, and after him several travellers, who 

 have described the Peak of Teneriffe (Fieyra, t. i, p. 225 ; 

 Bory de St. Vincent, p. 395). The following passages leave 

 no doubt on this head. Herod, iv, 184 $ Strabo, xvii (ed. 

 Falconer, t. ii, p. 1 167) ; Mela, iii, 10 ; Pliny, v. 1 ; Solinus, 

 i f 24; and even Diod. Sic. iii. (ed. Wess. t. i, p. 221). 



X Mannert, Geogr. der Griechen, t. iv, s. 57. The idea of 

 the happiness, of the great civilization, and of the riches of the 

 inhabitants of the north* was common to the Greeks, to the 

 people of India, and to the Mexicans. 



