The Discovery of America Part 22

[Footnote 341: Bunbury, _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. i.

p. 644.]

[Footnote 342: Strabo, ii. 3, - 4; xvii. 3, - 1.]

[Footnote 343: [Greek: Kathaper de kai tes Asias kai tes Libyes, katho synaptousin allelais peri ten Aithiopian, oudeis echei legein atrekos heos ton kath' hemas kairon, poteron epeiros esti kata to syneches ta pros ten mesembrian, e thalatte periechetai.] Polybius, iii. 38.]

[Footnote 344: Bunbury, _op. cit._ vol. ii. p. 15.]

[Footnote 345: See the map of Ptolemy's world, above, p. 264.]

[Sidenote: Story of the Phoenician voyage, in the time of Necho.]

These views of Hipparchus and Ptolemy took no heed of the story told to Herodotus of the circ.u.mnavigation of Africa by a Phoenician squadron at some time during the reign of Necho in Egypt (610-595 B. C.).[346] The Phoenician ships were said to have sailed from the Red Sea and to have returned through the Mediterranean in the third year after starting. In each of the two autumn seasons they stopped and sowed grain and waited for it to ripen, which in southern Africa would require ten or twelve weeks.[347] On their return to Egypt they declared ("I for my part do not believe them," says Herodotus, "but perhaps others may") that in thus sailing from east to west around Africa they had the sun upon their right hand. About this alleged voyage there has been a good deal of controversy.[348] No other expedition in any wise comparable to it for length and difficulty can be cited from ancient history, and a critical scholar is inclined to look with suspicion upon all such accounts of unique and isolated events. As we have not the details of the story, it is impossible to give it a satisfactory critical examination. The circ.u.mstance most likely to convince us of its truth is precisely that which dear old Herodotus deemed incredible. The position of the sun, to the north of the mariners, is something that could hardly have been imagined by people familiar only with the northern hemisphere. It is therefore almost certain that Necho's expedition sailed beyond the equator.[349] But that is as far as inference can properly carry us; for our experience of the uncritical temper of ancient narrators is enough to suggest that such an achievement might easily be magnified by rumour into the story told, more than a century after the event, to Herodotus.

The data are too slight to justify us in any dogmatic opinion. One thing, however, is clear. Even if the circ.u.mnavigation was effected,--which, on the whole, seems improbable,--it remained quite barren of results. It produced no abiding impression upon men's minds[350] and added nothing to geographical knowledge. The veil of mystery was not lifted from southern Africa. The story was doubted by Strabo and Posidonius, and pa.s.sed unheeded, as we have seen, by Hipparchus and Ptolemy.

[Footnote 346: Ptolemy expressly declares that the equatorial regions had never been visited by people from the northern hemisphere: [Greek: Tines de eisin hai oikeseis ouk an echoimen pepeismenos eipein. Atriptoi gar eisi mechri tou deuro tois apo tes kath' hemas oikoumenes, kai eikasian mallon an tis e historian hegesaito ta legomena peri auton.] _Syntaxis_, ii.

6.]

[Footnote 347: Rawlinson's _Herodotus_, vol. iii. p. 29, note 8.]

[Footnote 348: The story is discredited by Mannert, _Geographie der Griechen und Romer_, bd. i. pp. 19-26; Gossellin, _Recherches sur la geographie des Anciens_, tom. i. p. 149; Lewis, _Astronomy of the Ancients_, pp. 508-515; Vincent, _Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean_, vol. i. pp. 303-311, vol. ii. pp. 13-15; Leake, _Disputed Questions of Ancient Geography_, pp. 1-8. It is defended by Heeren, _Ideen uber die Politik, den Verkehr_, etc., 3e aufl., Gottingen, 1815, bd. i. abth. ii. pp. 87-93; Rennell, _Geography of Herodotus_, pp. 672-714; Grote, _History of Greece_, vol. iii. pp. 377-385. The case is ably presented in Bunbury's _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. i. pp. 289-296, where it is concluded that the story "cannot be disproved or p.r.o.nounced to be absolutely impossible; but the difficulties and improbabilities attending it are so great that they cannot reasonably be set aside without better evidence than the mere statement of Herodotus, upon the authority of unknown informants." Mr. Bunbury (vol. i. p. 317) says that he has reasons for believing that Mr. Grote afterwards changed his opinion and came to agree with Sir George Lewis.]

[Footnote 349: In reading the learned works of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, one is often reminded of what Sainte-Beuve somewhere says of the great scholar Letronne, when he had spent the hour of his lecture in demolishing some pretty or popular belief: "Il se frotta les mains et s'en alla bien content."

When it came to ancient history, Sir George was undeniably fond of "the everlasting No." In the present case his skepticism seems on the whole well-judged, but some of his arguments savour of undue haste toward a negative conclusion. He thus strangely forgets that what we call autumn is springtime in the southern hemisphere (_Astronomy of the Ancients_, p. 511). His argument that the time alleged was insufficient for the voyage is fully met by Major Rennell, who has shown that the time was amply sufficient, and that the direction of winds and ocean currents would make the voyage around southern Africa from east to west much easier than from west to east.]

[Footnote 350: "No trace of it could be found in the Alexandrian library, either by Eratosthenes in the third, or by Marinus of Tyre in the second, century before Christ, although both of them were diligent examiners of ancient records."

Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, p. 90.]

[Sidenote: Voyage of Hanno.]

Of Phoenician and other voyages along the Atlantic coast of Africa we have much more detailed and trustworthy information. As early as the twelfth century before Christ traders from Tyre had founded Cadiz (Gades),[351] and at a later date the same hardy people seem to have made the beginnings of Lisbon (Olisipo). From such advanced stations Tyrian and Carthaginian ships sometimes found their way northward as far as Cornwall, and in the opposite direction fishing voyages were made along the African coast. The most remarkable undertaking in this quarter was the famous voyage of the Carthaginian commander Hanno, whose own brief but interesting account of it has been preserved.[352] This expedition consisted of sixty penteconters (fifty-oared ships), and its chief purpose was colonization. Upon the Mauritanian coast seven small trading stations were founded, one of which--Kerne, at the mouth of the Rio d' Ouro[353]--existed for a long time. From this point Hanno made two voyages of exploration, the second of which carried him as far as Sierra Leone and the neighbouring Sherboro island, where he found "wild men and women covered with hair," called by the interpreters "gorillas."[354] At that point the ships turned back, apparently for want of provisions.

[Footnote 351: Rawlinson's _History of Phoenicia_, pp. 105, 418; Pseudo-Aristotle, _Mirab. Auscult._, 146; Velleius Paterculus, i. 2, - 6.]

[Footnote 352: Hanno, _Periplus_, in Muller, _Geographi Graeci Minores_, tom. i. pp. 1-14. Of two or three commanders named Hanno it is uncertain which was the one who led this expedition, and thus its date has been variously a.s.signed from 570 to 470 B. C.]

[Footnote 353: For the determination of these localities see Bunbury, _op. cit._ vol. i. pp. 318-335. There is an interesting Spanish description of Hanno's expedition in Mariana, _Historia de Espana_, Madrid, 1783, tom. i. pp.

89-93.]

[Footnote 354: The sailors pursued them, but did not capture any of the males, who scrambled up the cliffs out of their reach. They captured three females, who bit and scratched so fiercely that it was useless to try to take them away. So they killed them and took their skins home to Carthage. _Periplus_, xviii. According to Pliny (_Hist. Nat._, vi. 36) these skins were hung up as a votive offering in the temple of Juno (i. e.

Astarte or Ashtoreth: see Apuleius, _Metamorph._, xi. 257; Gesenius, _Monumenta Phoenic._, p. 168), where they might have been seen at any time before the Romans destroyed the city.]

[Sidenote: Voyages of Sataspes and Eudoxus.]

No other expedition in ancient times is known to have proceeded so far south as Sierra Leone. Two other voyages upon this Atlantic coast are mentioned, but without definite details. The one was that of Sataspes (about 470 B. C.), narrated by Herodotus, who merely tells us that a coast was reached where undersized men, clad in palm-leaf garments, fled to the hills at sight of the strange visitors.[355] The other was that of Eudoxus (about 85 B. C.), related by Posidonius, the friend and teacher of Cicero. The story is that this Eudoxus, in a voyage upon the east coast of Africa, having a philological turn of mind, wrote down the words of some of the natives whom he met here and there along the sh.o.r.e.

He also picked up a ship's prow in the form of a horse's head, and upon his return to Alexandria some merchants professed to recognize it as belonging to a ship of Cadiz. Eudoxus thereupon concluded that Africa was circ.u.mnavigable, and presently sailed through the Mediterranean and out upon the Atlantic. Somewhere upon the coast of Mauritania he found natives who used some words of similar sound to those which he had written down when visiting the eastern coast, whence he concluded that they were people of the same race. At this point he turned back, and the sequel of the story was unknown to Posidonius.[356]

[Footnote 355: Herodotus, iv. 43.]

[Footnote 356: The story is preserved by Strabo, ii. 3, -- 4, 5, who rejects it with a vehemence for which no adequate reason is a.s.signed.]

[Sidenote: Wild exaggerations.]

It is worthy of note that both Pliny and Pomponius Mela, quoting Cornelius Nepos as their authority, speak of Eudoxus as having circ.u.mnavigated Africa from the Red Sea to Cadiz; and Pliny, moreover, tells us that Hanno sailed around that continent as far as Arabia,[357]--a statement which is clearly false. These examples show how stories grow when carelessly and uncritically repeated, and they strongly tend to confirm the doubt with which one is inclined to regard the tale of Necho's sailors above mentioned. In truth, the island of Gorillas, discovered by Hanno, was doubtless the most southerly point on that coast reached by navigators in ancient times. Of the islands in the western ocean the Carthaginians certainly knew the Canaries (where they have left undoubted inscriptions), probably also the Madeiras, and possibly the Cape Verde group.[358]

[Footnote 357: Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, ii. 67; Mela, _De Situ Orbis_, iii. 9.]

[Footnote 358: After the civil war of Sertorius (B. C. 80-72), the Romans became acquainted with the Canaries, which, because of their luxuriant vegetation and soft climate, were identified with the Elysium described by Homer, and were commonly known as the Fortunate islands. "Contra Fortunatae Insulae abundant sua sponte genitis, et subinde aliis super aliis innascentibus nihil sollicitos alunt, beatius quam aliae urbes excultae." Mela, iii. 10.

[Greek: Alla s' es elysion pedion kai peirata gaies athanatoi pempsousin, hothi xanthos Rhadamanthys, teper rheste biote pelei anthropoisin; ou niphetos, out' ar cheimon polys oute pot' ombros, all' aiei Zephyroio ligy pneiontas aetas okeanos aniesin anapsychein anthropous.]

_Odyssey_, iv. 563.

Since Horace's time (_Epod._ vi. 41-66) the Canary islands have been a favourite theme for poets. It was here that Ta.s.so placed the loves of Rinaldo and Armida, in the delicious garden where

Vezzosi augelli infra le verde fronde Temprano a prova lascivette note.

Mormora l' aura, e fa le foglie e l' onde Garrir, che variamente ella percote.

_Gerusalemme Liberata_, xvi. 12.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pomponius Mela's World, cir. A. D. 50.]

[Sidenote: Views of Pomponius Mela, cir. A. D. 50.]

The extent of the knowledge which the ancients thus had of western Africa is well ill.u.s.trated in the map representing the geographical theories of Pomponius Mela, whose book was written about A. D. 50. Of the eastern coast and the interior Mela knew less than Ptolemy a century later, but of the Atlantic coast he knew more than Ptolemy. The fact that the former geographer was a native of Spain and the latter a native of Egypt no doubt had something to do with this. Mela had profited by the Carthaginian discoveries. His general conception of the earth was substantially that of Eratosthenes. It was what has been styled the "oceanic" theory, in contrast with the "continental" theory of Ptolemy. In the unvisited regions on all sides of the known world Eratosthenes imagined vast oceans, Ptolemy imagined vast deserts or impenetrable swamps. The former doctrine was of course much more favourable to maritime enterprise than the latter. The works of Ptolemy exercised over the mediaeval mind an almost despotic sway, which, in spite of their many merits, was in some respects a hindrance to progress; so that, inasmuch as the splendid work of Strabo, the most eminent follower of Eratosthenes, was unknown to mediaeval Europe until about 1450, it was fortunate that the Latin treatise of Mela was generally read and highly esteemed. People in those days were such uncritical readers that very likely the antagonism between Ptolemy and Mela may have failed to excite comment,[359] especially in view of the lack of suitable maps such as emphasize that antagonism to our modern minds. But in the fifteenth century, when men were getting their first inklings of critical scholarship, and when the practical question of an ocean voyage to Asia was pressing for solution, such a point could no longer fail to attract attention; and it happened fortunately that the wet theory, no less than the dry theory, had a popular advocate among those cla.s.sical authors to whose authority so much deference was paid.

[Footnote 359: Just as our grandfathers used to read the Bible without noticing such points as the divergences between the books of Kings and Chronicles, the contradictions between the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, the radically different theories of Christ's personality and career in the Fourth Gospel as compared with the three Synoptics, etc.]

[Sidenote: Ancient theory of the five zones.]

[Sidenote: The Inhabited World and the Antipodes.]

If the Portuguese mariners of the generation before Columbus had acquiesced in Ptolemy's views as final, they surely would not have devoted their energies to the task of circ.u.mnavigating Africa. But there were yet other theoretical or fanciful obstacles in the way. When you look at a modern map of the world, the "five zones" may seem like a mere graphic device for marking conveniently the relations of different regions to the solar source of heat; but before the great Portuguese voyages and the epoch-making third voyage of Vespucius, to be described hereafter, a discouraging doctrine was entertained with regard to these zones. Ancient travellers in Scythia and voyagers to "Thule"--which in Ptolemy's scheme perhaps meant the Shetland isles[360]--had learned something of Arctic phenomena. The long winter nights,[361] the snow and ice, and the bitter winds, made a deep impression upon visitors from the Mediterranean;[362] and when such facts were contrasted with the scorching blasts that came from Sahara, the resulting theory was undeniably plausible. In the extreme north the ocean must be frozen and the country uninhabitable by reason of the cold; contrariwise, in the far south the ocean must be boiling hot and the country inhabitable only by gnomes and salamanders. Applying these ideas to the conception of the earth as a sphere, Pomponius Mela tells us that the surface of the sphere is divided into five zones, of which only two are fit to support human life. About each pole stretches a dead and frozen zone; the southern and northern hemispheres have each a temperate zone, with the same changes of seasons, but not occurring at the same (but opposite) times; the north temperate zone is the seat of the Oec.u.mene ([Greek: oikoumene]), or Inhabited World; the south temperate zone is also inhabited by the Antichthones or Antipodes, but about these people we know nothing, because between us and them there intervenes the burning zone, which it is impossible to cross.[363]

[Footnote 360: Bunbury, _op. cit._ vol. ii. pp. 492, 527. The name is used in different geographical senses by various ancient writers, as is well shown in Lewis's _Astronomy of the Ancients_, pp. 467-481.]

[Footnote 361: The Romans, at least by the first century A. D., knew also of the shortness of northern nights in summer.

Arma quidem ultra Littora Invernae promovimus, et modo captas Orcadas, ac minima contentos nocte Britannos.

Juvenal, ii. 159.

See also Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, iv. 30; Martia.n.u.s Capella, vi.

595; Achilles Tatius, x.x.xV.]

[Footnote 362: The reader will remember Virgil's magnificent description of a Scythian winter (_Georg._, iii. 352):--

Illic clausa tenent stabulis armenta; neque ullae Aut herbae campo apparent, aut arbore frondes: Sed jacet aggeribus niveis informis, et alto Terra gelu late, septemque a.s.surgit in ulnas; Semper hiems, semper spirantes frigora Cauri.

Tum Sol pallentes haud unquam discut.i.t umbras; Nec c.u.m invectus equis altum pet.i.t aethera, nec c.u.m Praecipitem Oceani rubro lavit aequore currum.

Concresc.u.n.t subitae currenti in flumine crustae; Undaque jam tergo ferratos sustinet orbes, Puppibus illa prius patulis, nunc hospita plaustris, aeraque dissiliunt vulgo, vestesque rigesc.u.n.t Indutae, caeduntque securibus humida vina Et totae solidam in glaciem vertere lacunae, Stiriaque impexis induruit horrida barbis.

Interea toto non secius aere ningit; Intereunt pecudes; stant circ.u.mfusa pruinis Corpora magna boum; confertoque agmine cervi Torpent mole nova, et summis vix cornibus exstant.