MEDITERRANEAN COAST. 
9 
ledge left full scope to poetical fancy. Hence 
we find Horace painting their felicity in the most 
glowing colours, and viewing them as a refuge 
still left for mortals, from that troubled and im- 
perfect 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 an- 
cients along the northern coast of Africa. At 
the earliest period 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 remained an immense expanse of 
land and ocean unexplored. The extent of this 
unknown region, the peculiar aspect of man and 
nature, the uncertainty as to its form and termi- 
nation, rivetted upon it, in a peculiar degree, the 
attention of the ancient world. All the expedi- 
tions of discovery on record, with scarcely any 
exceptions, except those of Nearchus and Pytheas, 
had Africa for their object. They were under- 
taken with an anxious wish, first, to explore the 
extent of its two unknown coasts, those which 
stretched beyond the Mediterranean on one side, 
and the Red Sea on the other ; to ascertain, above 
all, the termination to which these led ; and next^ 
