The pillars of Hercules

by David Urquhart

But in one of the accounts of the Missionary expeditions to Morocco, for the redemption of slaves, I fell upon a description of the ceremony, as practised here down to the close of the seventeenth century. The vessel was proceeding from Ceuta to Cadiz: the ceremony was not performed on crossing between Europe and Africa, but on passing through the Straits and passing outwards.[188] It is a pantomime, of which that performed by our sailors in crossing the line might be given as a description: it is in fact the copy, the old Phœnician initiation, preserved down to the time when navigation took her new spring; and at the very spot, and amongst the mariners who first reached and passed the Equator, was by them transferred to the ideal line of the Equator, mingling in strange and inexplicable incongruity ancient mythology with modern science; and then changing Hercules, who had nothing to do with the sea, for Neptune. The duckings with water mean the ablution; the shaving and fining recall the oaths and penalty; the white wig, the veil of the priests of Hercules; and the cooking utensils are paraded in memory of the victim[189] and altar.

I now come to the last point which I shall notice: it is the one which first suggested to me the thought; and in it are involved debated questions of history and undescribed and unnoted geographical features.

When Don Henry established himself upon the western limit of the world, to plan adventures over the then unexplored waste of waters, it was the shade of Necho that beckoned him down the African coast; led him on from cape to cape, and invited him from cluster to cluster of its islands. At length Africa was turned; there was the Indian as well as the Pacific ocean opened, and that wonderful discovery and dominion—the colonization and commerce of the Portuguese established, which dotted with their settlements the line of coast from the Pillars of Hercules to China.

In Herodotus he found the voyage round the cape ordered by the Egyptian king, and the return likewise ordered by the Pillars of Hercules: these orders were obeyed. The father of history, it is told, was treated as a dreamer by his Roman and Alexandrian successors; but the recent extension of knowledge has in every point confirmed his statements, and shown that, five centuries B.C., more was known of geography than in the golden age of Augustus.[190] Whether it be in fixing the points of the Lybian deserts, or in tracing the outlines of the Caspian Sea,[191] it is the old Greek who appears the accurate modern; and the geographer of the time of the Cæsars, who is the reporter of fables and of tales.[192] Thus do we find in antiquity, a counterpart to our modern disputes, and Pliny, Mela, and Strabo, are the prototypes of Rennell, Gosselin, and Mannert.

The events which throw light on the circumnavigation of Africa are. 1. The expedition of Necho, as hearsay. 2. The Periplus of Hanno, in a fragment copied, by an unknown hand, from a Carthaginian monument. The voyage does not so appear to have extended beyond the western coast; but Pliny, who had other data, carries it round to the Erythræan sea. 3. The traffic of the Carthaginians on the Gold coast.

The expedition of Necho[193] is flatly contradicted by Strabo, after an examination of all the evidence. The same opinion was pronounced by the school of Alexandria, Pomponius Mela, and Pliny, who contending for at least the possibility of the voyage, do not so much as mention the narrative of Herodotus, considering it doubtless a fable, because of the asserted change of shadow, which to us is evidence of its reality.

Gosselin, after writing a learned work to prove that the statement of Herodotus was correct, wrote a still more learned work to prove the reverse. The new idea which had turned the current of his conclusions was, the impossibility of such a voyage without the compass. Major Rennell presses him with objections, asserting the consistency of the narrative, and authority of the evidence, and, arguing against the objection, says, that “the barks of the ancients were adapted for coasting navigation, could keep close in shore, and might be hauled up on the beach. This voyage, immense as it was, did not therefore necessitate any venturesome entrance into the open sea—they needed not to have lost sight of the land even for a day.”

Heeren seats himself on the bench, and sums up, and without combating M. Gosselin, decides against him. “This gentleman’s arguments,” he says, “amount to nothing; for are we in a situation to judge of the perfection of Phœnician navigation? Nations accustomed to coasting navigation are generally much better acquainted with its difficulties than great sea-faring nations. It has been recently ascertained that the difficulties in reaching the Cape from the Red Sea, are not so great as from the Mediterranean. All here combined to facilitate the progress of the expedition.” Yet these favourable circumstances, however, served only until the coast of Guinea was reached, and thence “to the Straits of Gibraltar, was the most difficult part of the voyage.”

Why does Heeren slur over the difficulty of which he is evidently aware? Was it that, placed in a dilemma between the desire of deciding a controversy, and the fear of risking his character for “critical discrimination,” he had recourse to a little mystification?[194]

For those who have the compass, it is true that the difficulties are less in coming from the Red Sea, but exactly the reverse for those who have it not:—a vessel sailing from the Guinea coast to the Straits of Gibraltar, must keep far out to sea.[195]