[307] Tin exists in some of the islands of the Indian Ocean, and they were worked at a later period, but there is no direct evidence, as far as I am aware, that they were known at the date when Tyre was most flourishing.
[308] Diodorus Siculus, v. 18, 19; De Mirab. Auscult., 84. Müllenhof, Deutsche Alterthumskunde, i., Berlin, 1870, p. 467, traces the report through the historian Timaeus to Punic sources.
[309] The narration of Hanno’s voyage has been preserved, apparently in the words of the commander’s report. Geographi Graeci minores, ed. Mueller (Paris, 1855), i. pp. 1-14. Cf. also Prolegom., pp. xviii, xxiii. Our only notion of the date of the expedition is derived from Pliny, Hist. Nat., v. i. § 7, who says: “Fuere et Hannonis Carthaginiensium ducis commentarii, Punicis rebus florentissimis explorare ambitum Africae jussi.” All that is known of Himilko is derived from the statement of Pliny, Hist. Nat., ii. 67, that he was sent at about the same time as Hanno to explore the distant regions of Europe; and from the poems of Avienus, who wrote in the fourth century, and professed to give, in the Ora Maritima, many extracts from the writings of Himilko. The description of the difficulties of navigation in the Atlantic is best known. In his Deutsche Alterthumskunde (Berlin, 1870), i. pp. 73-210, Muellenhof has devoted especial attention to an analysis of this record.
[310] Pliny, Hist. Nat., vi. 36, 37; Mela, iii. 100, etc.; Solinus, 23, 56 [ed. Mommsen, p. 117, 230]; Ptolemy, Geogr., iv. 6; Rapport sur une mission scientifique dans l’archipel Canarienne, par M. le docteur Verneau; 1877. In Archives des Missions Scientifique et Litteraires, 3e série, tom. xiii. pp. 569, etc. The presence of Semites is indicated in Gran Canaria, Ferro, Palma, and the inscriptions agree in character with those found in Numidia by Gen. Faidherbe. In Gomera and Teneriffe, where the Guanche stock is purest, there have been no inscriptions found. Dr. Verneau believes that the Guanches are not descended from Atlantes or Americans, but from the Quaternary men of Cro-magnon on the Vézère; he found, however, traces of an unknown brachycephalic race in Gomera.
[311] In the second century, a.d., Pausanias (Desc. Graec., i. 23) was told by Euphemus, a Carian, that once, on a voyage to Italy, he had been driven to the sea outside [ἐς τὲν ἔξω θάλασσαν], where people no longer sailed, and where he fell in with many desert islands, some inhabited by wild men, red-haired, and with tails, whom the sailors called Satyrs. Nothing more is known of these islands. Ἔξο has here been rendered simply “distant”; but even in this sense it could hardly apply in the time of Pausanias to any region but the Atlantic. It is more probable that the phrase means “outside the columns.”
In the first century b.c., some men of an unknown race were cast by the sea on the German coast. There is nothing to show that these men were American Indians; but since that has been sometimes assumed, the matter should not be passed over here. The event is mentioned by Mela (De Chorogr., iii. 5, § 8), and by Pliny (Hist. Nat., ii. 67); the castaways were forwarded to the proconsul, Q. Caecilius Metellus Celer (b.c. 62), by the king of the tribe within whose territory they were found. Pliny calls the tribe the Suevi; the reading in Mela is very uncertain. Parthey has Botorum, the older editors Baetorum, or Boiorum. The Romans took them for inhabitants of India, who had been carried around the north of Europe; modern writers have seen in them Africans, Celts, Lapps, or Caribs. A careful study of the whole subject, with references to the literature, will be found in an article by F. Schiern: Un énigme ethnographique de l’antiquité, contributed to the Memoirs of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries; New Series, 1878-83, pp. 245-288.
In the Louvre is an antique bronze which has been thought to represent one of the Indians of Mela, and also to be a good reproduction of the features of the North American Indian (Longpérier, Notice des bronzes antiques, etc., du Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1868, p. 143), but the supposition is purely arbitrary.
Such an event as an involuntary voyage from the West Indies to the shores of Europe is not an impossibility, nor is the case cited by Mela and Pliny the only one of the kind which we find recorded. Gomara (Hist. gen. de las Indias, 7) says some savages were thrown upon the German coast in the reign of Frederic Barbarossa (1152-1190), and Aeneas Silvius (Pius II.) probably refers to the same event when he quotes a certain Otho as relating the capture on the coast of Germany, in the time of the German emperors, of an Indian ship and Indian traders (mercatores). The identity of Otho is uncertain. Otto of Freisingen ([Dagger] 1158) is probably meant, but the passage does not appear in his works that have been preserved (Aeneas Silvius, Historia rerum, ii. 8, first edition, Venice, 1477). The most curious story, however, is that related by Cardinal Bembo in his history of Venice (first published 1551), and quoted by Horn (De orig. Amer., 14), Garcia (iv. 29), and others. It deserves, however, record here. “A French ship while cruising in the ocean not far from Britain picked up a little boat made of split oziers and covered with bark taken whole from the tree; in it were seven men of moderate height, rather dark complexion, broad and open faces, marked with a violet scar. They had a garment of fishskin with spots of divers shades, and wore a headgear of painted straw, interwoven with seven things like ears, as it were (coronam e culmo pictam septem quasi auriculis intextam). They ate raw flesh, and drank blood as we wine. Their speech could not be understood. Six of them died; one, a youth, was brought alive to Roano (so the Italian; the Latin has Aulercos), where the king was” (Louis XII.). Bembo, Rerum Venetarum Hist. vii. year, 1508. [Opere, Venice, 1729, i. 188.]
Nos manet Oceanus circumvagus; arva, beata
Petamus arva, divites et insulas,
Reddit ubi Cererem tellus inarata quotannis
Et inputata floret usque vinea.