The coast again becoming almost desert, the crew were obliged to eat the tender buds of palm-trees, and on one occasion were glad to devour seven camels which they were fortunate enough to encounter. Besides the dangers of famine, Nearchus had to contend with legions of whales, many of them one hundred and fifty feet long,—a prodigious size for inland seas like the Persian Gulf. One day he noticed a jet of water of great height and violence, and soon the air was filled with spray tossed up by a sportive herd of these monsters. The frightened sailors let drop their oars: but Nearchus encouraged them and dissipated their fears. He placed the vessels of the fleet abreast in a single line, and ordered them to advance simultaneously at full speed, as in a naval combat, and, upon approaching the whales, to terrify them by shouts and the din of trumpets. At a given signal, the vessels started and dashed forward upon the cetaceous army: the whales plunged into the abysses of the water, and, reappearing at the sterns of the fleet, sent up a shower of spurts in derision of their timorous enemy. Nearchus found these fish so abundant that large numbers of them were stranded in every storm: the inhabitants built houses of their bones, using the larger bones for posts, planks, and doors; the jawbones furnished an excellent thatch, or roofing material. He also saw huts constructed of the back-bones of smaller fish.
The fleet now reached the coast of Caramania, after passing an island supposed to be inhabited by an enchantress very much like the Circe of the Greek fable, who was said to seduce navigators by the promise of voluptuous pleasures and then change them into fish. Nearchus now found his distresses nearly at an end, as the soil was productive of grain and fruit, and as the streams yielded an abundance of water. He soon came in view of a vast promontory on the Arabian side, (Cape Mussendoun,) which seemed completely to close the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The sailors, weary of their long voyage, earnestly besought Nearchus to land here and to march across the country to Babylon. Nearchus insisted that this would not be fulfilling the intentions of Alexander, whose command it was to survey every portion of the coast from the Indus to the Euphrates. They doubled the cape, therefore, and entered the Persian Gulf. Keeping close to the northern shore, they came at last to a tract of territory inhabited by friendly races and yielding an abundance of every fruit except the olive. They landed at the mouth of the Anamis,—the modern Minab,—and refreshed themselves after their long hardships. They reposed under the shade of palms, and conversed gayly of the dangers they had escaped and the wonders they had seen. A party wandered from the coast towards the interior, and, to their surprise and joy, met a man clothed in the Greek chlamys and speaking the Greek language. They asked him who he was and what country he was from. He replied that he belonged to the army of Alexander, and that the camp was not far off. Transported with delight, they took the stranger to Nearchus, whom he told that Alexander was at five days' journey from the sea.
Nearchus, upon receiving this intelligence, caused his ships to be drawn on shore, a rampart to be built round them, and repairs to be commenced upon them, while he, Archius, a lieutenant, and six sailors should set out to find the camp of the king. As they approached the outposts, soldiers sent forward to meet them by Alexander, who had been informed of their coming, did not recognise them, on account of their changed dress and haggard aspect. Alexander received them with kindness, but in deep sorrow, for he had conceived the idea that the eight persons before him were all that had survived the perils of the sea. "You two have returned," he said, "you and Archius, safe and sound, and this alone renders the loss of my fleet endurable: tell me in what manner perished my vessels and my army." Upon learning the safety of the entire expedition, he is said to have burst into a flood of tears, and to have sworn that he derived more pleasure from this event than from the entire conquest of Asia. He offered sacrifices to Jupiter, Hercules, Apollo, and Neptune. He then proposed that Nearchus should repose from his trials, and that another should conduct the fleet to Susa, the capital of Susiana. Nearchus thought it unjust, however, that the glory of completing a task which he had so successfully begun should be taken from him, and retained the command. He was obliged to fight his way back to the sea through warlike and hostile tribes.
The rest of the voyage, along the coasts of Caramania and Persis,—the modern Fars,—was comparatively easy, orders having been given by Alexander that Nearchus should find at intervals supplies of every species of provisions. On the 24th of February, in the year 325 b.c., the fleet arrived at the mouth of the Euphrates. Nearchus learned that Alexander had already reached Susa, which was situated some forty miles towards the interior upon the borders of the Tigris. He therefore ascended that river, and, at a bridge newly thrown over it for the passage of Alexander's army, the junction of the long-separated naval and land forces took place. Nearchus received a crown of gold for his success in the expedition; the pilot was rewarded with a crown of smaller size, and the debts of the army were discharged by Alexander.
The voyage had occupied nearly five months, and the distance sailed was not far from fifteen hundred miles, if the sinuosities and indentations of the coast are included, and twelve hundred in a straight line. Half of this period of five months must be considered to have been spent upon the land, in surveys of the coast, in repairs of the vessels, and in forays in search of food and water. The same route is now usually traversed by merchant vessels in the space of three weeks. Nothing can give a better idea of the immense service Nearchus was thought to have rendered the state, than the fact that it was in the convivialities of a banquet in his honor, a year later, that Alexander abandoned himself to the excesses which resulted in his death.
Eudoxus, the next navigator in chronological order, was a native of Cyzicus, in Mysia, and was sent by its citizens, in the third century b.c., upon a mission connected with the promotion of geographical science, to Alexandria, then the seat of maritime enterprise. He became strongly imbued with the spirit of exploration and investigation which reigned there, and succeeded in inducing Ptolemy Euergetes, the reigning king, to fit out a naval armament, and to send it under his command upon an expedition down the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea. He appears to have made a successful voyage, for he returned with a cargo of aromatics and precious stones. It is supposed that he sailed down the Red Sea, and, passing out by the Straits of Babelmandel, followed the southern coast of Arabia as far as the Persian Gulf: it is altogether unlikely that he reached the shores of India. Euergetes plundered him of his wealth upon his return, but died soon after, leaving the throne to his widow Cleopatra.
The queen took Eudoxus into favor, and sent him upon a fresh voyage. He seems to have been driven by unfavorable winds upon the coast of Abyssinia, where he made advantageous bargains with the inhabitants. He rescued from the water a fragment of a wreck,—the prow of a vessel which, from a sculpture representing the figure of a horse, seemed to have come from the West. This prow was exhibited by Eudoxus in the harbor of Alexandria, and was declared by some mariners from Cadiz to be of the precise form peculiar to large vessels which went from that port to fish upon the coast of Mauritania, or Morocco. It was evident, therefore, to the ardent mind of Eudoxus, that this fragment of a wrecked vessel, left to the mercy of the waves, had performed the grand maritime problem of antiquity,—the circuit of Africa. He abandoned himself with enthusiastic credulity to the enticing hope that he might himself succeed in achieving this darling object of the ambition of princes, kings, and states.
He determined to renounce the deceitful patronage of courts, and to start with a new expedition from Cadiz. He went thither by way of Massilia and other trading settlements, and urged all who were animated by the spirit of progress to follow him. He thus succeeded in equipping an armada, consisting of one ship and two large boats, on board of which were not only goods and provisions and the necessary crews, but artisans, scientific men, and musicians. The very ardor and extravagance of their hopes, and perhaps, too, the undue gayety in which they took their departure, unfitted them to encounter the dangers and hardships of African discovery. The crew were frightened at the swell of the open sea through which Eudoxus wished to make his way, and insisted upon following the shore, according to the usual cautious method of those days. The consequence was that the ship was stranded, and the cargo was with difficulty saved. Eudoxus prosecuted the voyage in a single ship of lighter construction, till he came to a race of people who spoke, as he thought, the same language as those he had met on the opposite side of the continent. Thinking this discovery enough for the expedition in its now enfeebled state, he returned to Spain and equipped another small fleet, better fitted to buffet the waves of the open sea.
He again set forth; but the narrative, as handed down by Strabo, breaks off at this point, and we are without information upon the results of the enterprise. It is true that rumor and fable have supplied the place of authentic facts, and that Eudoxus is described by one version as having actually circumnavigated Africa; by another, as having come to a race of people who were born dumb; and by another, as having fallen in with a nation who had no mouths, but received their food through an orifice in the nose. These exaggerations are unworthy of notice; and they do not seem to have thrown discredit upon the account of the earlier experience of Eudoxus, which ranks among the most esteemed narratives of ancient maritime adventure.
We have thus given, in some detail, descriptions of all the noteworthy experiments in navigation previous to the birth of Christ. Two features, it will be at once remarked, characterized all these efforts:—1st, The only reliable propelling force continued to lie in the oars; and, 2d, no sailor ventured out of sight of land, unless, as when crossing the Mediterranean, he knew that other lands lay beyond the visible horizon. We close this division of the subject with the general observation, that the opening of the Christian era found the world almost entirely under Roman dominion,—one which preferred extending its sway by land to prosecuting discovery by sea. The Mediterranean was, thus far, the only seat of commerce and the exclusive 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 Mediterranean, as long as Tyre, Sidon, Rome, Carthage, successively 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 Compass. 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 acquaintanceship; and how the commerce and intercourse which were the immediate consequences led to that general and absorbing interest 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.