"Sea animals," he tells us, "crept upon the tangled weed." It has been thought that with a little good fortune Himilco might have discovered America two thousand years before the birth of Columbus. But Himilco returned home by the Azores or Fortunate Islands, as they were called.
Leaving the Tin Islands, Pytheas voyaged on to Cape Finisterre, landing on the island of Ushant, where he found a temple served by women priests who kept up a perpetual fire in honour of their god. Thence Pytheas sailed prosperously on up the English Channel till he struck the coast of Kent. Britain, he announced, was several days' journey from Ushant, and about one hundred and seventy miles to the north. He sailed round part of the coast, making notes of distances, but these are curiously exaggerated. This was not unnatural, for the only method of determining distance was roughly based on the number of miles that a ship could go in an hour along the shore. Measuring in this primitive fashion, Pytheas assures us that Britain is a continent of enormous size, and that he has discovered a "new world." It is, he says, three cornered in shape, something like the head of a battleaxe. The south side, lying opposite the coast of France, is eight hundred and thirty-five miles in length, the eastern coast is sixteen hundred and sixty-five miles, the western two thousand two hundred and twenty-two—indeed, the whole country was thought to be over four thousand miles in circumference. These calculations must have been very upsetting to the old geographers of that age, because up to this time they had decided that the whole world was only three thousand four hundred miles long and six thousand eight hundred broad.
He tells us that he made journeys into the interior of Britain, that the inhabitants drink mead, and that there is an abundance of wheat in the fields.
"The natives," he says, "collect the sheaves in great barns and thrash out the corn there, because they have so little sunshine that an open thrashing-place would be of little use in that land of clouds and rain." He seems to have voyaged north as far as the Shetland Islands, but he never saw Ireland.
Having returned from the north of the Thames, Pytheas crossed the North Sea to the mouth of the Rhine, a passage which took about two and a half days. He gives a pitiable account of the people living on the Dutch coast and their perpetual struggle with the sea. The natives had not learnt the art of making dykes and embankments. A high tide with a wind setting toward the shore would sweep over the low-lying country and swamp their homes. A mounted horseman could barely gallop from the rush and force of these strong North Sea tides.
But the Greek geographers would not believe this; they only knew the tideless Mediterranean, and they thought Pytheas was lying when he told of the fierce northern sea. Pytheas sailed past the mouth of the Elbe, noting the amber cast upon the shore by the high spring tides. But all these interesting discoveries paled before the famous land of Thule, six days' voyage north of Britain, in the neighbourhood of the frozen ocean. Grand excitement reigned among geographers when they heard of Thule, and a very sea of romance rose up around the name. Had Pytheas indeed found the end of the world? Was it an island? Was it mainland? In the childhood of the world, when so little was known and so much imagined, men's minds caught at the name of Thule—Ultima Thule—far-away Thule, and weaved round it many and beautiful legends. But to-day we ask: Was it Iceland? Was it Lapland? Was it one of the Shetland Isles?
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NORTH BRITAIN AND THE ISLAND OF THULE. From Mercator's edition of Ptolemy's map. |
"Pytheas said that the farthest parts of the world are those which lie about Thule, the northernmost of the Britannic Isles, but he never said whether Thule was an island or whether the world was habitable by man as far as that point. I should think myself"—the speaker is Strabo, a famous Greek traveller who wrote seventeen books of geography—"I should think myself that the northern limit of habitude lies much farther to the south, for the writers of our age say nothing of any place beyond Ireland, which is situate in front of the northern parts of Britain." Pytheas said that Thule was six days' sail north of Britain. "But who in his senses would believe this?" cries Strabo again. "For Pytheas, who described Thule, has been shown to be the falsest of men. A traveller, starting from the middle of Britain and going five hundred miles to the north, would come to a country somewhere about Ireland, where living would be barely possible."
The first account of the Arctic regions likewise reads like pure romance to the ignorant and untravelled. "After one day's journey to the north of Thule," says Pytheas, "men come to a sluggish sea, where there is no separation of sea, land, and air, but a mixture of these elements like the substance of jelly-fish, through which one can neither walk nor sail." Here the nights were very short, sometimes only two hours, after which the sun rose again. This, in fact, was the "Sleeping Palace of the Sun."