PILLARS OF HERCULES. 



95 



elusive scene of navigation. Though Hanno and Eudoxus had 

 indeed passed the Pillars of Hercules, and had coasted along 

 the African shore as far as the negro territories, and though 

 Pytheas, proceeding to the north, had visited — still hugging 

 the land — the Baltic and the British Channel, their expeditions 

 must be considered as at once venturesome and futile, for the 

 age was not able to repeat them, and totally failed to make 

 them useful either to geography or commerce. As long as the 

 centre of power, of luxury, of wealth, remains within the Medi- 

 terranean, as long as Tyre, Sidon, Rome, Carthage, succes- 

 sively control the destinies of the world, so long shall we find 

 mankind lacking both the motive and the means to seek new 

 worlds, by sea, beyond. Time, however, will furnish both the 

 motive and the means : we shall find the one, as we proceed, in 

 the Spice Islands of the East, the other in the Mariner's Com- 

 pass. The next division of our subject will narrate how the 

 contests between the Crescent and the Cross over the tomb of 

 Christ brought Europe and Asia into contact and acquaintance- 

 ship; and how the commerce and intercourse which were the 

 immediate consequences led to that general and absorbing inte- 

 rest in the sea and ships which eventually produced Columbus 

 and Magellan. The influence of nutmeg and cinnamon upon 

 the spread of the gospel and the development of science is a 

 theme which we shall show to be not unworthy of earnest and 

 philosophical inquiry. 



SUPPOSED FORM OF THE SHIPS OF NEARCHUS. 



