Columbus was the first man who traversed the sea of Sargasso, or area of the Atlantic ocean south of the Azores, where it is covered by an immense mass of sea-weed for a space six or seven times as large as France: the alarm of his crew at this unexpected spectacle was considerable. The sea-weed is sometimes so thickly accumulated, that it requires a considerable wind to impel the vessel through it. The remarks and comparisons of M. von Humboldt, in reference to ancient and modern navigation, are highly interesting. (Examen, ut sup. pp. 69, 88, 91, etc.)
J. M. Gesner (Dissertat. de Navigationibus extra Columnas Herculis, sects. 6 and 7) has a good defence of the story told by Herodotus. Major Rennell also adopts the same view, and shows by many arguments how much easier the circumnavigation was from the East than from the West (Geograph. System of Herodotus, p. 680); compare Ukert, Geograph. der Griechen und Römer. vol. i, p. 61; Mannert, Geog. d. G. und Römer, vol. i, pp. 19-26. Gossellin (Recherches sur la Géogr. des Anc. i, p. 149) and Mannert both reject the story as not worthy of belief: Heeren defends it (Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, i, 2, pp. 86-95).
Agatharchides, in the second century B. C., pronounces the eastern coast of Africa, southward of the Red sea, to be as yet unexamined: he treats it as a matter of certainty, however, that the sea to the south-westward is continuous with the Western ocean (De Rubro Mari, Geog. Minores, ed. Huds. v, i, p. 11).
[547] Strabo, iii, p. 170. Sataspês (the unsuccessful Persian circumnavigator of Libya, mentioned just above) had violated the daughter of another Persian nobleman, Zopyrus son of Megabyzus, and Xerxês had given orders that he should be crucified for this act; his mother begged him off by suggesting that he should be condemned to something “worse than death”—the circumnavigation of Libya (Herod. iv, 43). Two things are to be remarked in respect to his voyage: 1. He took with him a ship and seamen from Egypt; we are not told that they were Phenician: probably no other mariners than Phenicians were competent to such a voyage,—and even if the crew of Sataspês had been Phenicians, he could not offer rewards for success equal to those at the disposal of Nekôs. 2. He began his enterprise from the strait of Gibraltar instead of from the Red sea; now it seems that the current between Madagascar and the eastern coast of Africa sets very strongly towards the cape of Good Hope, so that while it greatly assists the southerly voyage, on the other hand, it makes return by the same way very difficult. (See Humboldt, Examen Critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie, t. i, p. 343.) Strabo, however, affirms that all those who had tried to circumnavigate Africa, both from the Red sea and from the strait of Gibraltar, had been forced to return without success (i, p. 32), so that most people believed that there was a continuous isthmus which rendered it impracticable to go by sea from the one point to the other: he is himself, however, persuaded that the Atlantic is σύῤῥους on both sides of Africa, and therefore that circumnavigation is possible. He as well as Poseidonius (ii, pp. 98-100) disbelieved the tale of the Phenicians sent by Nekôs. He must have derived his complete conviction, that Libya might be circumnavigated, from geographical theory, which led him to contract the dimensions of that continent southward,—inasmuch as the thing in his belief never had been done, though often attempted. Mannert (Geog. d. G. und Röm. i, p. 24) erroneously says that Strabo and others founded their belief on the narrative of Herodotus.
It is worth while remarking that Strabo cannot have read the story in Herodotus with much attention, since he mentions Darius as the king who sent the Phenicians round Africa, not Nekôs; nor does he take notice of the remarkable statement of these navigators respecting the position of the sun. There were doubtless many apocryphal narratives current in his time respecting attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to circumnavigate Africa, as we may see by the tale of Eudoxus (Strabo, ii, 98; Cornel. Nep. ap. Plin. H. N. ii, 67, who gives the story very differently; and Pomp. Mela, iii, 9).
[548] Arrian, Exp. Al. vii, 1, 2.
[549] Herodot. i, 1. Φοίνικας—ἀπαγινέοντας φορτία Ἀσσύριά τε καὶ Αἰγύπτια.
[550] See the valuable chapter in Heeren (Ueber den Verkehr der Alten Welt i, 2, Abschn. 4, p. 96) about the land trade of the Phenicians.
The twenty-seventh chapter of the prophet Ezekiel presents a striking picture of the general commerce of Tyre.
[551] Herodot. i, 178. Τῆς δὲ Ἀσσυρίης ἐστὶ μέν κου καὶ ἄλλα πολίσματα μεγάλα πολλά· τὸ δὲ ὀνομαστότατον καὶ ἰσχυρότατον, καὶ ἔνθα σφι, τῆς Νίνου ἀναστάτου γενομένης, τὰ βασιλήϊα κατεστήκεε, ἦν Βαβυλών.