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and deserted, in the full unmitigated glare of a vertical sun, but by night the mountains seemed on fire, songs of rejoicing were heard, accompanied with the sounds of flutes, drums, cymbals, and gongs, together with cries, which waked the shrill echoes of night, and startled the senses of the Punic sailors. Scarcely different have been the records of modern travellers, respecting the inhabitants of these tropical wilds; who, fearing to be scorched by the solar ray, pass the day in caverns, or in sylvan shades, and wake up into lively existence under the milder beams of the moon and stars. Here they saw the various species of the monkeytribe, pre-eminent among which is the ourang-outang,original of Satyrs. The Thessalians had, before this, given rise to the fables of the Centaurs, by appearing to their neighbours on horses, which they had been the first to tame. In these places gold was found to be the universal metal; so common that the chains of captives were forged from it. The Carthaginians relate that the transactions which they had with the people of the African coast were carried on in dumb-show, that, a signal having been made with smoke, the savages placed the goods which they had to dispose of on the coast and retired, and that the Carthaginians, having removed these goods, deposited an equivalent. If that which the latter laid down, did not satisfy the former, it was not removed until a suitable addition had been made. This sort of barter is the primeval state of commerce. They were once astounded at the sight of sheets of flame, traversing the country and spreading in every direction down to the sea-shore; a conflagration made by the natives to get rid of the dry and waste grass at the end of autumn. Such were the causes of Africa being the reputed dwelling-place of the Gorgons, and other monstrous creations, springing from ignorant fear. Pliny tells us that this voyage was effected round the whole extent of the African continent.

Himilco, we are told, sailed as far as Britain and Ireland, the great Western Islands. It is generally, and with great reason, believed that the Phoenicians, and subsequently the Carthaginians, traded to the south-western coasts and islands of Britain for tin. Hence, Cornwall and the Scilly Isles were called by the ancients Cassiterides, or Tin-countries, a term derived from the Phoenician and Sanscrit.

9. Pytheas, an illustrious navigator of antiquity, who flourished in France, at Marseilles, a colony from Greece, about 400 years B.C., directed his course to the northwestern parts of Europe. He reached Britain, then called Al-fioun (Albion), or White-land, from the appearance of its cliffs at a distance. He kept on sailing, we are told, towards the north, and arrived at Thule. This is supposed to have been Iceland. Of this place, as also of the other islands and coasts of this sea, he relates that he found, in some parts, the light of the setting sun continuing so strong, till dawn of day, that the stars could not venture to appear; in others he found the sun shining by day and night. This account seems to have perplexed those who would otherwise have been inclined to credit him; but this fact, related by Pytheas, is quite natural during the middle of our sumwhen approaching towards the Arctic circle. The converse of this, the polar winter, or the effects of it, felt less in proportion to the diminution of latitude, may apply to the account which we have of Ulysses, who, we read, sailed, perhaps at the fall of the year, to the ends of the ocean, where the Cimmerians dwell in profound gloom, who see neither the rising nor setting sun, but have the veil of night for ever spread over them. The credit of Pytheas was not much improved by his accounts of the four and six-horned sheep on the shores of the Baltic; but modern information attests the general accuracy of the Massilian sailor. Some part of his story wears, at first sight, a fabulous aspect; when we find from Tacitus, who retails it from him, that the noise of the sun in its passage below the ocean is heard; and that the

mer,

figures of the gods appear visible, crowned with immortal light. By the latter observation we are to understand the varied effects of the Aurora Borealis; by the former the hollow noise of the rolling sea against the dreary shores of Norway. He intimates, that, in going very far to the north, sea, land, and air, seemed all confused; owing perhaps to fogs:-and that the water was of such a dense character, as could hardly be cleaved by the ship's prow; alluding, perhaps, to the strong tides of those seas. He is said to have been the first who ascribed the tides to the influence of the moon. The vulgar opinion, even up to the time of Mela, in the middle of the first century after Christ, was that the earth was a huge animal, the heaving of whose breast occa sioned the rise and fall of the waters. Another opinion was, that the ocean had within itself vast caves, into which the water was regularly received, and out of which it was again as regularly ejected. Previously to quitting the Mediter ranean, the tidal influence had not come under the consideration of man. This sea scarcely indicates any perception of that lunar attraction, which operates upon the waters of the earth generally. The probable reason is, that this sea, as also the Baltic, which admits of a parity of reasoning, is almost entirely cut off from the main oceans; and that the narrowness of the connecting straits does not allow the swell of the great waters to be felt within the requisite time of the moon's passing the meridian.

10. Before speaking of the naval exploits of Alexander the Great, of Macedon, we may mention that Curtius gives a circumstantial account of a fire-ship, which was equipped by the Tyrians, at the time their capital was besieged by Alexander. Having selected one of the largest galleys they possessed, they loaded it by the stern with stones and other ballast, so that the prow became considerably elevated above the surface of the water. The whole of the vessel, which was above water, was covered very thickly with sulphur and other inflammable substances; which operation being completed, advantage was taken of a wind favourable for the attempt, and all the sails being set, the crew, who, in aid of the sails, used their oars also, directed it towards the mole which Alexander had, with so much difficulty, laboured to construct. When they had approached sufficiently near to the destined object of destruction, the vessel was set on fire, and the crew jumped into boats, which had followed for the purpose of receiving them. This project completely succeeded, and Alexander was frustrated in his attempt on Tyre at that period. This place he ultimately subdued, and having no more land to conquer he sought the waters.

We now come to the voyage of Nearchus, the Macedonian admiral, down the Indus, along the Erythrean Sea, and up the Persian Gulf, as far as the mouth of the Tigris. Alexander the Great, having made himself omnipotent by land, resolved to encroach, at least by his lieutenants, on the realms of ocean. He therefore set in motion an expedi tion for maritime discovery. He sailed at the head of the fleet down the Indus, and gazed upon the expanse of ocean, which the ancients deemed the circular boundary of the world. The ocean had been held, from the oldest times, to be a river running round the earth; which river was bounded by the dark clouds of heaven. Such, we are told, was it depicted on the shield of Achilles, which seems to have presented on its surface, a map of the world, as then known. That this notion was very aneient we learn from the Sacred Writings;-"When I made the cloud the gar ment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling-band for it. Job. XXXVIII. 9. The writer of the Book of Job probably lived nearly 2000 years before the birth of our Saviour, Christ.

We find that Alexander, at sight of the crocodiles, for some time confounded the Indus with the Nile; owing pro

bably to the saying of Herodotus, that the Nile and the Indus were the only rivers, in which the crocodile had been seen. Having arrived at the mouth of the Indus, the Grecian army was terribly alarmed at the sight of the huge and awful billows, which rolled in at the mouth of this river. They had perhaps never seen the ebb and flow of the tide before: so that scarcely any officer of this vast and magnificent army could be got to head the further progress of this enterprise; for all felt doubt and dismay at the sight of the ocean, whose breast heaving, in this part of the globe, with higher tides than in most other seas, seemed to portend celestial vengeance at their impiety in approaching the limit of the world. This horror had been increased by finding, at break of day, their ships, which they had anchored during night, left on dry ground by the ebb of the tide. When, however, Nearchus had accepted the command, and they had got out to sea, the first thing that struck their attention was, that the sun being vertical at noon day, they projected no shadow, and that upon occasion, it even deflected towards the south; that stars which they had seen high up in the northern sky, now decreased in altitude, or sank altogether below the horizon; and that others, never visible before, now rose up in the south. As Nearchus coasted along Gedrosia, now Beloochistan, his sailors saw, for the first time, the whale, spouting out streams of water into the air, which, descending like a whirlpool, so alarmed the sailors, that their navigation would have been at an end, had not Nearchus, by raising the shouts of his men, and the din of trumpets, terrified and scared down the monster of the deep. For a great part of their voyage they found it difficult, or impossible, to procure corn, so that they were reduced to live upon fish; and, worse than all, as these Greeks dolefully complained, on the flesh of turtle, which abounded on the coast!

11. The voyages of Eudoxus now claim our attention. He was a native of Cyzicus, who flourished about 130 years B. C. He seems to have been an officer of fortune. Like many others, whose ardent minds have impelled them to explore, and to relate, things strange and unheard of, he has been misrepresented and ridiculed by the geographers and critics of his time. There is a natural indisposition to believe that which does not accord with one's own experience; through which incredulity we are sometimes as liable to err, as by an unthinking confidence. Bruce, the celebrated traveller, at the end of the last century, who had related the circumstance, not unusual, of an Abyssinian cutting steaks from the flank of a cow, skewering up the wound, and then driving her out to pasture, was thus satirized by the witty poet of the day :

Nor have I been where men--what lack, alas! Kill half a cow, and turn the rest to grass. Eudoxus made several voyages down the Red Sea, and towards the East, at the instigation, and with the aid of Ptolemy Euergetes, king of Egypt, and his successor; but, eager to pursue the grand object of nautical honour, the circumnavigation of Africa, he seems to have eschewed royal patronage, and to have set out on his own account, with the assistance of some friends whom he got to join him.

We ought to observe that the traditions, or records, of the circuit of Africa, having been formerly made, were now becoming apocryphal; the geographers of the times having decided that the regions to the south, or the torrid zone, were utterly uninhabitable, by reason of the extreme heat, while the regions to the north, forming the frigid zone, were unapproachable, by reason of the intense cold. They believed, theoretically, that there was another temperate zone, corresponding with their own, beyond the torrid; but that this "outhern temperate zone was completely severed from the northern by unendurable heat. Hence, in the time of Mela and Ptolemy, it was believed that the ocean passed through Africa, and that the Nile rose in the southern division, and, flowing under the sea, appeared again in Upper Egypt.

For some time all proceeded favourably, until the crew of Eudoxus, fearing lest they should be swallowed up amid the heaving billows of the Atlantic, urged the vessel so close to the shore, that it was stranded on one of the dangerous sand-banks abounding on the coast. A smaller and more compact galley of fifty oars, was formed from the fragments of the stranded vessel; in which ship he continued to proceed southward, but was at last forced to return, his resources not being equivalent to the end proposed, after the disaster of the shipping. He is said to have made a second attempt, with the issue of which we are not so well acquainted. He seems to have been set down as an impostor; and is reported to have told many fables and other absurd stories of his voyages and adventures. According to some, he really made the circuit of Africa. Some nations he found dumb; which relation has in it a stroke of probability, for, not understanding the language of foreigners, the natives might have thought it as well to be silent.

Of some people he related, we are told, that they had no tongues, of others, that being mouthless, they received their food up the nostrils. Some nations, we know, completely cover up the lower parts of their faces; but the account of things originally true, though strange, becomes exaggerated and distorted by passing from one narrator to another. In a word, this navigator seems, by common consent, to have been more meritorious than fortunate. 12. When the Romans began, and continued to practise navigation, it was to serve their purpose of conquest: but, to gratify their luxury, the extremities of the known world were ransacked, and thus maritime enterprise was indirectly promoted. Their ships, when unemployed in war, made a survey of the dominions which their power had acquired. Thus, at the end of the first century of the Christian era, Agricola, the governor of Britain, discovered it to be an island by sailing round it. The opportunity of surveying the coasts of the Erythrean Sea was furnished by the regular trading voyages, undertaken by the Alex andrian merchants from the north of the Red Sea down into the Indian Ocean, which was the ancient Erythrean. The merchant-vessels of the Roman empire seem to have navigated this sea to the right, as far south as the Isle of Madagascar; and to the left, as far as the coasts of

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Malabar, of which Arrian, who flourished about A. D. 140, gives us an account, in his work called the Periplus, or Circumnavigation. The general facts herein related do not differ materially from those which have come under modern observation; the people of the coast are little changed in manners or living, their country has the same appearance, and its productions are much the same as the author of the Periplus alludes to.

With regard to the form of the vessels, employed by the Phoenicians and other neighbouring nations, about the same period, it seems that those vessels intended for commercial purposes were without keels, and bore a certain resemblance to the barges of the Hollanders at the present day. They were flat-floored, round, broad, drawing little water, and of very great breadth, in proportion to their length; so that they might be capable of containing a larger quantity of commodities than would be the case under any other form. Their floor-timbers were continuous; and, with the addition of one futtock only on each side (called by the Greeks encælia, meaning the ribs or internal parts of the animal body), the frame was completed,

Before the introduction of the keel, the framework of the vessel was formed of timbers bent round, and kept in the curved form by beams passing across, to which the timbers were bolted; but as this was a laborious practice, the keel became introduced, by which the necessary shape of the frame was more easily ensured. The Latin word for keel is carina, from curro, to run, alluding to the mode in which the keel runs or cuts through the water. The frame was covered with planking; the planks being fastened to the frame by large nails or bolts formed of iron, some of which passed through both plank and timber, and were clenched at the end to render the fixture more complete. It has been ascertained, that the mode of dove-tailing, which is now so frequently applied in carpentry, was known in those days; for when the planks were not long enough to reach from stem to stern of the vessel, they were joined end to end, the ends being dove-tailed into each other, by which they were prevented from starting out from their places.

We may here notice, in addition to what was said in the first article, a strange mode of attacking an enemy, as adopted by Hannibal, in a war with Pontus; which was by throwing vessels filled with snakes on the enemies' decks. The ships of Pontus thought it strange to see potters' vessels hanging from the yard-arms of Hannibal's ships; but when those same vessels were thrown on their own decks, and snakes were perceived to crawl out of them, the effect produced was just what Hannibal had anticipated; namely, that the uncommon event frightened and dismayed a brave people, who would not have shrunk from any of the ordinary dangers of war. On other occasions, casks containing inflammable matter were hung from the projecting head of the vessel; and when the head was brought so as to be over the deck of the enemy's vessel, the casks were opened, and the inflammable matter shaken out, and precipitated upon the deck. Sometimes these casks were placed on the ends of long poles, placed across or aslant the deck.

the time, and allows that if trees be cut down between the 15th and the 23rd days of the moon, they will endure for a long time without perishing; but he adds that, if that limitation be transgressed, the daily practice and experience of all artisans may convince the world it would become worm-eaten and rotten in an incredibly short space of time. Some supposed that the timber felled on the day of the new moon was absolutely incorruptible; they were even attentive to the quarter from whence the wind blew, and to the season of the year; for instance, in the beginning of Autumn it was deemed improper to fell timber for shipbuilding, except the wind was westerly, or, in the Winter, unless it blew from the north.

THE ROMANCE OF ANCIENT NAVIGATION, AS INDUCED
BY THE DESIRE OF MONOPOLY IN TRADE.

We must now say a few more words on the motives, which
are presumed to have led the Phoenicians, and the subse-
quent mariners of antiquity, to the affectation of mystery
and horror, with which they were so wont to shroud all
their naval enterprises. The Phoenicians, so celebrated for
commerce, and consequently for navigation, whose pilots
manned the ships of the nations, and conducted the vessels
of Solomon over the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the
Mediterranean, as far as Tarshish, "the silver country,"
are placed even by Homer in a most unfavourably moral
light. Iniquity and deceit are their characteristics, both
in Sacred and Profane history. Hence the term "Punic
faith," as applied to the Carthaginians, implied treachery.
The especial source, to which the equivocal conduct of the
people of Tyre and Sidon may be traced up, is their desire
and endeavour to preserve to themselves exclusively the
trade and commerce of the world; possessing, as they did,
the privilege of serving the Egyptian, and other nations,
whose religion deterred them from pursuing maritime
enterprises. The people of Egypt had long ceased
cultivate the naval art; for they dreaded the sea, which
swallowed up their great divinity, the Nile. This river the
Phoenicians were never allowed to enter. In such sort did
the Arabians, in after ages, become navigators for the
Hindoos, who were superstitiously afraid of the sea, This
gave the Phoenicians power, wealth, pleasure; in short,
every advantage, whether for good or ill, which this world
furnishes. They were also the great slave-traders of the
world. Having once attained to this pitch of envied dis-
tinction, they could not bear the idea of putting their con-
venience in jeopardy, as they knew,, or fancied, they must
do, if rivals competed with them in the foreign markets.
This leads us to suspect the motives, which made Hiram,
the Tyrian monarch, sneer at the inland cities, given up to
him by Solomon. The Phoenicians wanted, doubtless, a
harbour for ships, such as that of Joppa. The keenness
and activity of the Greeks was justly formidable to them.
They therefore went upon a bullying system; and, like arrant
braggarts, told how they had met in various climes with-
The Cannibals, that did each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.

There seems reason to believe that the destructive purposes of war were more conducive to the improvement The Phoenicians, with Tyre and Sidon as their two prin of ships than was the peaceful object of commerce: accord- cipal cities, engrossed, as has been before stated, by far the ingly, the strengthening and improvement of the timbers greater part of the commerce of the then known world: and other parts of a vessel became more and more an they brought the gold, and gems, and spices of the East object of attention, as nations became more and more from India, Persia, &c., to Tyre and Sidon, by caravans or involved with each other in political or warlike dissensions. land-carriage, and distributed them to the nations of the Experiments were made, and experience was appealed to, West by means of their shipping on the Mediterranean. as to the best kinds of wood for ship-building. The Pho- From an early period, however, they thirsted to gain pos nicians, the Grecians, the Carthaginians, and the Romans, session of some port, which should give them a command successively directed their thoughts into this channel. The of the navigation of the Red Sea. This object, for a long fir was found to be the lightest, as well as the easiest to time, they could not attain; for the eastern shores of the work the oak, on the other hand, though more difficult in Red Sea, or Arabian Gulf, were in the hands of the application, proved to be the strongest and the most durable. Arabians and Assyrians, while the western shores were in Besides these, the elm, the cedar, the cypress, the pitch- the power of the Egyptians and Ethiopians. They therepine, the ilex (a species of oak), the ash, and even the fore strove to obtain possession of some port on the Medialder, were severally tried: the oak, the fir, and the pitch-terranean, near what is now called the Isthmus of Suez, in pine, were those in general use.

As the science advanced in general use and repute, practice and experience introduced certain maxims, some of which were really found necessary, while others were whimsical and capricious. Hesiod, for example, informs us that it was deemed improper to fell any timber for the purpose of ship-building, except on the 17th day of the moon's age, because, it being then in the wane, the sap or internal moisture, which is the grand cause of early decay, would be considerably lessened. Another writer extends

order that, by a land-carriage of a few miles, they might connect together the navigation of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. This object they attained by gaining pos session of Rhinocorura, a city on the boundary between Palestine and Egypt. By this plan they extended their commerce to a vast extent, by making the Red Sea the channel of communication between Tyre and the eastern countries, instead of transporting their commodities by land.

The jealousy with which the Phoenicians regarded any attempt on the part of other nations to share with them

the advantages and profit derivable from commercial navigation, was strikingly shown in numerous instances. If, at any time, when bound on a foreign voyage, they observed a stranger in company with them, and found him endeavouring to pursue the same track, they immediately altered their intended course, using every possible means to avoid him, and to prevent him from following them; it is even asserted that they often purposely risked the loss of their vessels and their own lives, rather than afford the inhabitants of any other country than their own the smallest opportunity of breaking into their monopoly, or holding any share whatever in the commerce of the world. So fearful were they of rivalship, and so pertinaciously bent were they on keeping everything to themselves, that to add to the natural dangers of the seas, and to increase such discouragement as might prevent other nations from exposing themselves to it, they became pirates, and declared themselves at war, by turns, with every country in the then known world; whenever they met with vessels to which they thought themselves superior in force, and consequently able to overcome.

Terrific accounts of the dangers of foreign navigation were propagated among the lively, but credulous, people of the Morea, who not only received these stories with facility, but added embellishments of their own to that which had already been ungraciously imposed upon them. The Greeks, too, possessing an open and communicative spirit, promulgated these accounts in their various writings; and with all the skill which proficiency in literature could effect. From the Phoenicians, therefore, for evident reasons, nothing to the purpose could be learned. The Romans, by destroying all their records and vestiges of ancient glory, hoped that nothing would be learned from the Carthaginians.

What little knowledge, dimmed by the length of its passage, people had of the East, came to them by commercial transactions. They heard that the precious commodities of the East were obtained under circumstances of peculiar difficulty and peril. So hideous and alarming were the objects to be encountered, after escaping the dangers of the sea, that the task of purveying the desired luxuries was gladly relinquished to those who chose to undergo such danger. The golden sands of India swarmed thickly with ants, as big as foxes; and wonderful caution and expedition was necessary in gathering up the precious dust, loading it on camels, and getting off, before swarms of these monstrous insects should environ and destroy both men and beasts. Cinnamon, Herodotus tells us, was brought from the country of Bacchus, that is, India. It was carried into Arabia by certain birds to form their nests with, which were built on dangerous and inaccessible places. The Arabs would strew large pieces of flesh below their nests, which the birds descending would carry off to their young. The nests would break down with the weight, and an opportunity of gathering up the cinnamon was afforded. Cassia was found on the borders of a lake by persons covered over with hides and skins, to save themselves from the assaults of enormous bats, which occupied the neighbouring trees. The real truth seems to have been since made out; that these celebrated spices, which the Egyptians sought after, and which the Hebrews used in the composition of the holy anointing oil of the tabernacle and of the other sacred things, were brought from the coasts of Malabar, the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra, and other eastern regions, by Arabian merchants, from the earliest times; that the Arabs, in fact, engrossed the East Indian commerce, until the discovery of the monsoons, and navigation had so far advanced, as to enable the Greeks to steer off from the shores of Arabia. For many ages these Arabians were met by the Phoenicians, whose place was afterwards usurped by the Greeks. Whether frankincense came originally from the land of Arabia, or from the mountains of India, as some say, winged serpents were its jealous guardians. We are also told of trees bearing wool for fruit, by which is meant the cotton-trees.

It would be tedious to dwell upon the stories of Sirens, who seduced and changed the hardy mariners into beasts; of one-eyed Cyclops, to whom the human kind were but as insects, and who cut the tallest trees of the forest for their walking-sticks; people with the heads of horses; the pigmies and cranes; confounded perhaps with the monkeys; the horned birds; the Phoenix; the Sphynx, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,

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All such, then, are mere inventions, which arise, as the foregoing pages will show, from fear and misapprehension; in proportion to the ignorance of the mariner, or from his interested and selfish motives.

THE MONSOONS: A KNOWLEDGE OF THE EARTH INCREASED BY NAVIGATION.

THE first great natural relief, given to ancient navigation, was the discovery of the trade-winds which prevail in the Indian Ocean. These winds, from the dependence which may be placed upon them, and from their consequent value to navigation, are called trade-winds, and extend about thirty degrees on each side of the Equator. These winds, however, maintain their regularity only in the open ocean. Where land breaks the continuity of the liquid surface, great changes are produced; but the most remarkable effects exist in the Indian Ocean. The third degree of south latitude is a boundary between distinct winds; from that boundary northward to the continent of Hindostan, a north-east wind blows from October to April, and a southwest from April to October; while from the same boundary to the tenth degree of south latitude, a north-west wind blows from October to April, and a south-east from April to October. These winds are called monsoons. The term monsoon, or, according to the Persian, monsum, implies seasons; and is so used in the Malayan, moossin, and other dialects of the East. The breaking up of the monsoons, or periodical changes in the direction of these winds, divides the Indian year into two seasons. The monsoons

on the eastern side of the globe, originate with the tradewinds, of which they are a species, produced by the diversity of continent and islands, seas and gulfs, in this part of the world. These periodical currents of winds, if noticed by the Arabians, were not made to serve their maritime trade, until the keener enterprise of the West, in the person of Hippalus, about 50 A.D., first ventured to steer off from the Arabian and Persian shores, and to be impelled eastward in the direction of the wind. A voyage which had consumed years, now took up but as many months, by a conformity, on the part of the mariner, with this invariable law of nature. The means of profit and information were now less monopolized, and the West became better acquainted with the inhabitants and produce of the East.

The navigation to the Indies was continued, when the Romans became masters of Egypt, by sailing down the Arabian Gulf, and from thence to the mouth of the river Indus, along the southern coasts of Arabia and Persia. But, under the Emperor Claudius, this route was so far changed, that after emerging from the Arabian Gulf, they cut across the Indian Ocean directly to the mouth of the Indus, by noticing, and taking advantage of, the time when the south-west trade-wind blew. The trade was carried on with India thus:-The goods that were intended for the Indian markets, were embarked at Alexandria, and carried up the Nile, a distance of about three hundred miles, to Coptus. From the latter place, the merchandise was carried on camels' backs to Berenice, a distance of two hundred and sixty miles. Berenice is on the shore of the Red Sea, and there the goods were warehoused, until the proper season for sailing; when they steered for the opposite coast of Arabia, and took on board frankincense, and other Arabian commodities, giving arms, knives, vessels, &c., in return. They now proceeded on their voyage to India; whence, having disposed of their articles of merchandise, and got gold, spices, drugs, &c., in return, they pursued their voyage back to Alexandria, where they usually arrived about December or January. The Indian commodities were conveyed from Berenice to Alexandria in the way before described; and a fleet sailed annually from the latter place to Rome, conveying the treasures of the East.

When the Constantinopolitan empire was formed, by the division of the Roman empire into two parts, their maritime and commercial arrangements were very extensive. One fleet, called the fleet of Alexandria, was destined to bring to the capital the produce of India, as conveyed to the Red Sea. Another fleet was that of Seleucia, on the river Orontes, by which an intercourse was kept up with Persia, and higher Asia. A third fleet was stationed in the Euxine, or Black Sea, by which intercourse could be kept up with the nations of Eastern Europe, while at the same time a check could be given to the ravages of the uncivilized tribes of Scythia.

Various opinions were held by the ancients respecting the form and surface of the earth. The followers of Thales believed the earth to be a sphere; this was about 600 years B. C. The successors of Thales got into the notion that it was of a cylindrical form: some gave it the shape of a drum; others of a cube. Many believed it to be a high mountain, with an infinitely extended base, and that the stars moved round and round its summit; but Heraclides, the disciple of Aristotle, who lived about 335 B. C., actually taught that the earth had the figure of a ship. Some Indian sects are said to hold similar opinions. Anaximander, the disciple of Thales, was the first who represented the earth by maps and spheres.

With the improvement of navigation, advanced the knowledge of the earth; both, however, being still imperfectly understood:-witness, Strabo's comparison of the Spanish peninsula to "a hide spread out." The ancients knew that a great boundary to the West was formed by the Atlantic Ocean; but the confines of the earth towards the East they supposed were illimitable. Hence the distance on the earth's surface, measured from W. to E. they termed Longitude, or measurement in length, which they supposed infinitely greater than the measurement in breadth N. and S., which they termed Latitude. The knowledge of this began to be made practically useful for fixing the positions of places, hitherto often doubtful, on the earth's surface, by Ptolemy, in the middle of the second century of the Christian era. But this, the most celebrated geographer of antiquity, only approximates towards correctness. The Mediterranean Sea he makes 20° too long; the breadth of the Caspian Sea he makes to exceed the length; and the mouth of the Ganges is placed 46° out of its place. Nor can we wonder that the maps of the ancients should be incorrect, when, not yet possessing the magnetic needle, their sailing bore no reference to the heavens, and their maps were formed from road-books or itineraries, wherein marching distances were set down by the guides of an army; or from a sort of log-book, wherein was inserted the distance the ship had sailed, as calculated from point to point. But it surprises us at learning that the two former errors, mentioned above, were not corrected in modern maps until the first half of the last century.

To a nation which has an insular position, or good command of the sea, a naval force (which Themistocles, nearly 500 years B. C., understood the oracle to mean, when it advised the Athenians to defend themselves with wooden walls,) has been found, even from the earliest ages, to be the surest glory and defence. The influence of a state so fortunate has always been most widely and efficiently felt; and its power, whether for good or evil, has always been proportionally increased.

Before concluding, we should observe that it was customary, in ancient times to give an appellation to a vessel, according to the place from whence it started, or according to the purpose to which it was intended to be applied. Thus, Phaselus, a small yacht, pinnace, or pleasure-vessel, was named, in all probability, from Phaselis, a town in Pamphylia, belonging to the Cilicians, where such boats were much in use:-Cydarus, a vessel peculiar to a river in Thrace, of the same name:-Parones, which were small vessels built on the Parian Islands, in the Egean Sea, the inhabitants of which were much accustomed to use those vessels:-Myoparones, nearly of the same description with those last mentioned, and acquiring their title from the same cause, with the addition of the term Myon, a city in Epirus, where the use of them was much adopted. Cicero states that the name Cybea was applied to a large vessel built for the purposes of merchandise, and so called from the word "cibus," which is the Latin for meat or food. The term Gaulus, was applied to vessels nearly round, somewhat resembling the present jolly-boat, which term was probably derived from the same Latin word, which signifies a milkpail:-the term Corbitæ was applied to such vessels as Cæsar saw when he invaded Britain,-which we have already seen (p. 34) were made of wicker-work,-the word "corbis" signifying a wicker-basket :-Caudica, was a term applied to rafts, and was derived from "caudex," the stump or body of a tree :-Hippagines, from hippos, a horse, was applied to vessels employed for the transportation of cavalry or horses: Pontones,-from which is derived the word pontoons, was the term applied to such vessels as were adapted to the passage of rivers. Many others might be enumerated.

The naval art had advanced no further when the Gothic

irruptions into the southern climes of Europe, and conse. quent downfall of the Roman empire, threw Navigation, with all the other arts and sciences, back into their original barbarism. They flourished, however, in another part of the world, whither we must attend their footsteps,—at least when they seek the sea,-and hail their restoration in Europe. But here may properly be drawn the line, which bounds the ancient naval art and practice from that of subsequent times; and the crossing of this line will be the commencement of a dissertation on the navigation of the Middle ages.

THE WATCH-TOWER, OR LIGHT-HOUSE, ERECTED BY PTOLEMY SOTER, ON THE ISLE OF PHAROS, NEAR ALEXANDRIA.-ABOUT 300 B.C.

THIS was a large building, composed of fine white marble, one hundred and thirty-five feet high, on the top of which fires were constantly maintained, for the direction of ships upon the coast. The expense of this tower was about eight The Isle of Pharos was in the bay of Alexandria, about hundred Alexandrian talents, or about 330,000l. English. seven furlongs from the continent, and was joined thereto by a causeway. The tower was accounted one of the seven wonders of the world. The architect, Sostratus, was ordered to inscribe on it," King Ptolemy, to the gods, the saviours, for the benefit of sailors:" but, wishing to claim all the glory, he engraved his own name on the solid marble, which he covered with cement, on which he formed Ptolemy's inscription. When the cement had decayed by time, Ptolemy's name disappeared, and the following inscription then became visible;-" Sostratus, the Cnidian, son of Dexiphanes, to the gods, the saviours, for the benefit of sailors." Dexiphanes, was he who made the causeway mentioned above. This light-house is alluded to in our last paper, see page 40.

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