[698] D’Anville and Gosselin think that this is the island known as the French Island.
[699] Ansart thinks that this promontory is that known as Cape de Meta, and that the port is at the mouth of the little river called Soul or Soal.
[700] In his Æthiopian expedition. According to Strabo, he had altars and pillars erected there to record it.
[701] Under the impression entertained by the ancients, that the southern progress of the coast of Africa stopped short here, and that it began at this point to trend away gradually to the north-west.
[702] Coro. Salmasius seems with justice, notwithstanding the censures of Hardouin, to have found considerable difficulty in this passage. If it is Pliny’s meaning that by sea round the south of the Promontory of Mossylum there is a passage to the extreme north-western point of Africa, it is pretty clear that it is not by the aid of a north-west wind that it could be reached. “Euro,” “with a south-east wind,” has been very properly suggested.
[703] By this name he means the Æthiopian Troglodytæ. Of course it would be absurd to attempt any identification of the places here named, as they must clearly have existed only in the imagination of the African geographer.
[704] The supposed commencement of the Atlantic, to the west of the Promontory of Mossylum.
[705] From the Greek ἀσκὸς, a “bladder,” or “inflated skin.” It is not improbable that the story as to their mode of navigation is derived only from the fancied origin of their name.
[706] Apparently meaning in the Greek the “jackal-hunters,” θηροθῶες. For an account of this animal, see B. viii. c. [52], and B. xv. c. 95.
[707] Heliopolis, described in B. v. c. 4.