DISCOVERIES OF THE ANCIENTS. 
9 
Hence we find Horace painting their felicity in the 
most glowing colours, and viewing them as a re- 
fuge still left for mortals, from that troubled and 
imperfect enjoyment, which they were doomed to 
experience in every other portion of the globe. 
It is only by these obscure and evanescent traces, 
that we discover the progress of the ancients along 
the northern coast of Africa. At the earliest pe- 
riod of authentic history, the whole of this tract 
was known to the northern European nations, and 
formed, as it were, one system along with them. 
The names of Egypt, of Libya, and of Carthage, 
are as familiar in classic story, as those of Greece 
and of Rome. To the south, however, there re- 
mained an immense expanse of land and ocean un- 
explored. The extent of this unknown region, 
the peculiar aspect of man and nature, the uncer- 
tainty as to its form and termination, rivetted up- 
on it, in a peculiar degree, the attention of the an- 
cient world, All the expeditions of discovery on 
record, with scarcely any exceptions, except those 
of Nearchus and Pytheas, had Africa for their ob- 
ject. They were undertaken with an anxious wish, 
first, to explore the extent of its two unknown 
coasts, those which stretched beyond the Mediter- 
ranean on one side, and the Red Sea on the other ; 
to ascertain, above all, the termination to which 
these led ; and next, to penetrate into the depth of 
that mysterious world in the interior, which, 
