CA 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



city, and here Greek fancy located the Palace of the Sun. It 

 was here that the charioteer of the skies gave rest to his 

 coursers during the night, and from whence in the morning 

 lie drove them forth again. Colchos, therefore, was Homer's 

 eastern confine of the globe. On the north, Rhodope, or the 

 Riphean Mountains, were supposed to enclose the hyperborean 

 limits of the world. Beyond them dwelt a fabled race, seated in 

 the recesses of their valleys and sheltered from the contests of 

 the elements. They, were represented as exempt from all ills, 

 physical and moral, from sickness, the changes of the seasons, 

 and even from death. A race directly the converse of the ideal 

 hyperboreans were the Cimmerians, located at the mouth of 

 the Sea of Azof, who are described by Homer as dwelling in 

 perpetual darkness and never visited by the sun. He imagined 

 the existence of numerous other nations, who long continued to 

 hold a place in ancient geography. The Cyclops, who had but 

 one eye, were placed in Sicily ; the Arimaspians, similarly 

 afflicted, inhabited the frontiers of India ; the Pigmies, or 

 Dwarfs, who fought pitched battles with the cranes, were sup- 

 posed to dwell in Africa, in India, and, in fact, to occupy the 

 whole southern border of the Earth. 



In the time of Homer, all voyages in which the mariner lost 

 sight of land were considered as fraught with the extremest 

 peril. No navigator ever visited Africa or Sicily from choice, 

 but only when driven there by tempest and typhoon, and then his 

 woes usually terminated in shipwreck : a return was not merely 

 a marvel, but a miracle. Homer made Sicily the principal 

 scene of the lamentable adventures of Ulysses, and sufficient 

 traces are furnished by the Odyssey of the distorted and ex- 

 aggerated notions entertained in the poet's time of the character 

 of places reached by a voyage at sea. The existence of monsters 

 of frightful form and size, such as Polyphemus, who watched 

 for the destruction of the mariner and even roasted and de- 

 voured his quivering limbs ; of treacherous enchantresses, such 



