CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VII.THE VOYAGE OF HANNO THE CARTHAGINIAN—HE SEES CROCODILES, APES, AND VOLCANOES—THE VOYAGE OF HIMILCON TO AL-BION—THE VOYAGE AND IGNOMINIOUS FATE OF SATASPES THE PERSIAN—THE VOYAGE OF PYTHEAS THE PHOCIAN—THE SACRED PROMONTORY—A NEW ATMOSPHERE—AMBER—RETURN HOME—THE VERACITY OF PYTHEAS' NARRATIVE—THE EXPEDITION OF NEARCHUS THE MACEDONIAN—STRANGE PHENOMENA IN THE HEAVENS—THE ICTHYOPHAGI—HOUSES BUILT OF THE BONES OF WHALES—FISH FLOUR—A BATTLE WITH WHALES—AN UNEXPECTED MEETING—THE DISTANCE TRAVERSED BY NEARCHUS—THE VOYAGE OF EUDOXUS ALONG THE AFRICAN COAST—STATE OF NAVIGATION AT THE OPENING OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA.At a period which it is no longer possible to settle with precision, but certainly anterior to the fifth centuryb.c., the Carthaginians, then in the height of their maritime and commercial prosperity, ordered a navigator by the name of Hanno to make a voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and to found cities along the western shore of Africa. He set sail with a fleet of sixty vessels, each of which was impelled by fifty oars. He carried with him thirty thousand men and women, with abundant supplies and provisions. Within a week after passing the straits, they founded a city and erected a temple to Neptune; they also established five trading stations along the coast. They saw a race of people called Lixitæ, with whom they formed ties of friendship, and by whom they were furnished with interpreters. Continuing their course, they found another race dressed in the skins of wild beasts, who repelled them from the shore with stones and other missiles. They next came to the mouth of a river which was filled with crocodiles and hippopotami. Theysoon arrived at a coast edged with high mountains covered with trees, the wood of which was odoriferous and variously tinted. Beyond was an immense opening of the sea, bordered by plains on which they saw many blazing fires. Then they came to a large bay, in which was an island enclosing a salt-water lake, in which, again, was another island. Entering this lake in the night, they saw huge fires burning and heard the sounds of musical instruments and the cries of innumerable human beings. They next reached the fiery region of Thymiamata, whence torrents of flame poured down into the sea. Here the heat of the earth was such that the foot could not rest upon it. After four days' farther sail, they again found the land at night enveloped in flames. In the midst of these fires appeared one much more lofty than the rest: this, when seen by daylight, proved to be a very tall mountain, called the Chariot of the Gods. They soon met with a rude description of people, who had rough skins, and among whom the females were much more numerous than the males: the interpreters called themGorillæ. They endeavored to catch some of them, but only succeeded in capturing three females, who made so violent a resistance, that they were obliged to kill them and strip off their skins, which they carried back to Carthage. Being out of provisions at this point, they were unable to pursue their voyage, and returned home.This narrative, as given by Hanno himself, hardly fills two octavo pages: volumes of commentaries have been written upon it by geographers and antiquaries. The most probable of the various hypotheses formed upon it, is, that Hanno's voyage extended to Sherbro Sound, a little south of Sierra Leone. The features of man and nature, as described by Hanno, are to be found in Tropical Africa only: Ethiopians or negroes; Gorillæ, who are clearly apes, or orang-outangs; rivers so large as to contain crocodiles and river-horses. The great conflagrations of the grass, too, and the music and dancing prolongedthrough the night, are phenomena which have been observed only in the negro territories. But this hypothesis is not accepted by all geographers, one of whom gives to Hanno's course an extent of three thousand miles, while another limits it to less than seven hundred.While Hanno was thus exploring the western coast of Africa, another Carthaginian, named Himilcon, was sent by his countrymen to the North of Europe. From a very vague description of his voyage given in a Latin poem entitledOra Maritima, it is plain that he crossed the Bay of Biscay, and found, upon islands, as is asserted, but probably upon the mainland, a race of athletic people who went fearlessly to sea in barks made of skins sewed together. They crossed, in the space of two days, to a place called the Sacred Island, (Ireland,) which was not far from another island, named Al-Bion, (England.) No further details of this expedition have been preserved.Upon the establishment of the Persian sway over the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, towards the close of the fifth centuryb.c., the exploration of Africa became the peculiar province of the Persian monarchs. But this nation labored under an unconquerable aversion for the sea, and the only maritime effort of theirs on record was entirely casual in its origin, and futile in its results. It was as follows, as recorded by Herodotus:Sataspes, a Persian nobleman, having committed a crime punishable with death, was condemned by Xerxes to be crucified. One of his friends persuaded the monarch to commute the sentence into a voyage around Africa, which, he said, was much more severe, and might result advantageously to the nation. Sataspes obtained a vessel and recruited a crew in Egypt, and, sailing through the Pillars of Hercules, bent his course southward. He is represented as having beat about for many weeks, and probably reached the shores of the Great Saharan Desert. The aspect of this formidable and tempest-lashedcoast might well appall an amateur navigator accustomed to the luxurious indolence of a Persian court. He seems to have preferred crucifixion to circumnavigation, for he at once measured back his course to the Straits. He gave an incoherent account of his adventures to Xerxes, attributing his failure to the interference of an insurmountable obstacle, the nature of which he was unable to explain. Xerxes would listen to no excuse, and ordered the original sentence to be executed forthwith. Authorities differ as to the fate of Sataspes,—one asserting that he suffered the ignominious death to which he was condemned, and another alleging that he made his escape to the island of Samos.THE SACRED PROMONTORY.A colony which had been established at Massilia—now Marseilles—about six hundred years before Christ, by the Phocians, was, in the year 340b.c., at the height of its commercial prosperity. The citizens, being desirous of extending their maritime relations, sent, at this period, upon an expedition to the North ofEurope, through the Pillars of Hercules, a learned geographer and astronomer by the name of Pytheas. He started with a single ship, the finances of the city not permitting a larger outlay of means.He passed the Pillars on the sixteenth day from Massilia; and on the twentieth he arrived at the Sacred Promontory, the extreme western point of Iberia or Spain. A temple to Hercules had been erected at this spot. The inhabitants of the promontory declared, during the time of Pytheas, and, indeed, for two hundred years afterwards, that as the sun plunged at evening into the sea, they heard a hissing like that of a red-hot body suddenly dropped into water.PLAN OF PYTHEAS' VOYAGE.Following the coasts of Iberia and of Celtica, he came to the point of land now known as Finisterre, in France, and the promontory Calbium. Turning to the east, he was surprised to find himself in a wide gulf, with Celtica on his right, and an immense island on his left. The gulf was the British Channel, and the island the Al-Bion that Himilcon had vaguely discerned some centuries before. It was at this point that Pytheas may be said to have begun his career; and the discovery of Great Britain may safely be attributed to him.He described the island as having the form of an isosceles triangle, as may be seen upon the foregoing plan. Three promontories formed the three angles,—Belerium being now Land'sEnd, Cantium Cape Pepperness, and Orcas Duncansby Head. He found the inhabitants of the southern coast industrious and sociable, peaceable, honest, and sober. They raised wheat and worked rich mines of tin. As he sailed northward, along the eastern coast, he noticed that the days grew sensibly longer; and at Point Orcas, nineteen hours elapsed between the rising and the setting of the sun. He sailed still northward, and six days after leaving Orcas he came to an island, or a continent—he knew not which,—which he called Thule. As he found he could go no farther to the north, he spoke of this spot asUltima Thule, an expression which has passed into the figurative language of all modern nations as one denoting any remote point. Thule is generally considered to have been Shetland, although theories have been ardently advocated making it respectively Iceland, Sweden, and Jutland.The narrative of Pytheas, which has been thus far clear and reliable, assumes at this point a very fabulous aspect. He declares that north of Thule there was neither earth, nor sea, nor air. A sort of dense concretion of all the elements occupied space and enveloped the world. He compared it to the thick, viscid animal substance calledpulmo marinus, a sort of mollusk or medusa. He said that this substance was the basis of the universe, and that in it earth, air, and sky hung, as it were, suspended. This illusion has been explained by the dreary spectacle of fogs, mists, rains, and tempests which at this point of his voyage must have met the gaze of the daring navigator. It would have been difficult for any mind, in those early ages, to have been on its guard against the sinister impressions likely to result from the contemplation of a scene so appalling. It must be remembered that Pytheas was accustomed to the pure and transparent atmosphere, the dazzling sky, and the phosphorescent waters of the Mediterranean. It would have been astonishing if a man educated among the splendors of an almost tropical climate had not been oppressedby influences so gloomy. It was the belief of all early navigators that a point would be found somewhere without the Pillars of Hercules beyond which it would be impossible to penetrate. While timid adventurers declared they had arrived at this point hardly a week's sail from the Straits, and declared that an atmosphere of mist, darkness, and gigantic sea-weed barred their passage, Pytheas did not allow his imagination to be affected or his courage to be shaken till he found himself in presence of the sombre and formidable scenery of what, with true geographical propriety, he denominated "Thule and her utmost isles."Leaving his animal atmosphere behind him, Pytheas returned to Orcas and from thence to Cantium. Instead of following his former track through the British Channel homeward, he turned to the eastward, and arrived, in a few days' sail, at the mouth of the Rhine. He found the country here inhabited by a race of fierce barbarians. Upon the shores of a vast gulf, beyond, dwelt the Teutons and the Guttones. In this gulf was an island named Abalcia, upon whose shores the waves deposited, in spring, immense quantities of yellow amber, which the inhabitants burned instead of wood, or sold for fuel to their neighbors the Teutons. Pytheas pursued his voyage as far as a river named Tanais, now supposed to be either the Elbe or the Oder. He considered this stream to be the eastern boundary of Celtica, in which he included Germania. He now turned his face homeward, and, coasting along the shores of Celtica and Iberia, arrived without accident or adventure at Massilia. He had sailed one hundred and eighty-six thousand stadia, or eleven thousand miles: the duration of the expedition was less than a year.Geographers subsequent to Pytheas strove zealously to discredit his assertions. One denied the voyage altogether; another questioned the veracity of the narrative. Strabo was particularly hostile to Pytheas, whom he said he would prove "a liarof the first magnitude." He was thus led to make long quotations from his descriptions for the purpose of refuting them. As the original account given by Pytheas is not extant, the world is indebted to the skepticism of Strabo for all that it knows of one of the most interesting and daring maritime enterprises of antiquity.In the year 326 before Christ, Alexander of Macedon, having accomplished the conquest of Persia, and having invaded Hindostan by the north, found himself compelled, by a mutiny of his troops, to arrest his course upon the eastern bank of the river Indus. He was here seized with a desire to explore the lower course of that river, and afterwards the southern shores of Asia, a tract of coast with which the Greeks were entirely unacquainted. The object of the expedition was partly exploration, and partly to convey a portion of the army back to Babylon upon the river Euphrates. The dangers of the enterprise and the improbability of success deterred the greater part of the naval officers from attempting it, as neither the Arabian Sea nor the Persian Gulf had ever been traversed before. Nearchus, the admiral of the fleet, proposed several candidates for the perilous honor, who variously excused themselves. Nearchus at last proffered his own services, which, after some hesitation, were accepted. This selection of a commander tranquillized the soldiers and sailors intended for the expedition; for they felt that Alexander would not have sent his intimate friend upon a voyage from which he would not be likely to return. The splendor of the preparations, the beauty of the vessels, the confidence of the officers, also went far towards dissipating their fears. At the word of Alexander, says a modern poet,—"The pines descend; the thronging masts aspire;The novel sails swell beauteous o'er the curvesOf Indus: to the moderator's songThe oars keep time, while bold Nearchus guidesAloft the gallies. On the foremost prowThe monarch from his golden goblet poursA full libation to the gods, and callsBy name the mighty rivers through whose courseHe seeks the sea."Alexander accompanied his fleet to the delta of the Indus, from whence he obtained a view of the gulf. He then returned to lead his men across Gedrosia, Caramania, and Persis to Babylon. Nearchus then set sail, after offering sacrifices to Neptune and Jupiter Salvator, and ordering a series of games and gymnastic exercises. The voyage thus undertaken was an event of real importance in the history of navigation: it opened a route between Europe and the extremities of Asia. It was the source of the discoveries made in later times by the Portuguese, and the primary, though remote, cause of the successful establishment of the British in India.PLAN OF THE VOYAGE OF NEARCHUS.At the very mouth of the river they met a formidable obstacle,—a rocky bar over which the waves broke with extreme violence. Through this bar, in its softest parts, they cut a canal one-third of a mile in length, and at high tide passed through it with the fleet. They had hardly reached the open ocean before a heavy gale drove them into an indentation of land protected by an island: to this natural harbor Nearchus gave the name of Alexander. Here he caused a camp to be laid out and entrenched, and remained for twenty-four days, the soldiers subsisting chiefly on shell-fish. When the gale abatedthey again embarked, meeting with constant adventures and difficulties upon their way. One day they would pass through huge menacing rocks, so near that they touched them with their oars on either side. On another they would be compelled, on landing for water, to ascend for miles into the interior before finding fresh-water sources. A storm caused two galleys and a vessel to founder, the crews of which, however, succeeded in swimming to shore. Nearchus caused his whole army to land at this point, for they needed repose, and his shattered fleet required repairs. He met with Leonatus, whom Alexander had detached from the main body of the army to follow the coasts and keep up a communication with Nearchus. Wheat was also sent to this spot by Alexander for the fleet, and each vessel took a supply sufficient for ten days. Nearchus exchanged such sailors and soldiers as had proved inefficient, for fresh men selected from the division of Leonatus.At this point the narrative becomes strongly tinged with the usual exaggerations of the early navigators. Nearchus asserts that he observed strange phenomena in the heavens. When the sun was in the meridian, he says, no shadow was projected, and the stars which they were accustomed to see above them were now crouching close to the horizon; others, that had never before disappeared from the sky, now rose and set at intervals. The assertion in regard to shadows at noon is evidently a fabrication. Enough was known of astronomy and the motions of the heavenly bodies, in the time of Nearchus, to convince the learned that there must be a point where no shadow would be cast by a body directly beneath the sun at the summer solstice; and Nearchus, with a vanity quite usual in the conquerors and adventurers of those times, chose to assert, and he perhaps believed, that he had seen this singular phenomenon. Two circumstances will show the inaccuracy of his statement. The alleged appearance took place in the middle of the month of November, and twenty-five degrees north of the equator. Evenhad Nearchus been at this spot in midsummer, he would have seen shadows of very respectable length. Upon the coast of Gedrosia he found a people called Icthyophagi, or Fish-eaters. The mutton here tasted of fish, and Nearchus discovered that the sheep eat fish as well as the inhabitants, for the land yielded no pasturage.In one of the villages of the Fish-eaters Nearchus engaged a pilot who undertook to guide him as far as Caramania. The aspect of the coast now became less repulsive, and palm-trees, myrtles, and flowers grew wild upon the hill-sides. Such was the delight of the Macedonians at this sight, that they landed and wove garlands and wreaths of the foliage for the wives and daughters of the natives. Farther on, at a spot where the inhabitants made them presents of roasted tunny-fish—the first cooked fish they had yet received from the Icthyophagi—and where they noticed wheat-fields, they landed, and, after taking possession of the village, demanded the surrender of all their wheat. The people made a feeble resistance, and then gave up all the flour they possessed,—not wheat flour, but fish flour,—flour made by reducing fish to powder, as we make flour by pulverizing the kernels of wheat.The coast again becoming almost desert, the crew were obliged to eat the tender buds of palm-trees, and on one occasion were glad to devour seven camels which they were fortunate enough to encounter. Besides the dangers of famine, Nearchus had to contend with legions of whales, many of them one hundred and fifty feet long,—a prodigious size for inland seas like the Persian Gulf. One day he noticed a jet of water of great height and violence, and soon the air was filled with spray tossed up by a sportive herd of these monsters. The frightened sailors let drop their oars: but Nearchus encouraged them and dissipated their fears. He placed the vessels of the fleet abreast in a single line, and ordered them to advance simultaneously at full speed, as in a naval combat, and, upon approaching thewhales, to terrify them by shouts and the din of trumpets. At a given signal, the vessels started and dashed forward upon the cetaceous army: the whales plunged into the abysses of the water, and, reappearing at the sterns of the fleet, sent up a shower of spurts in derision of their timorous enemy. Nearchus found these fish so abundant that large numbers of them were stranded in every storm: the inhabitants built houses of their bones, using the larger bones for posts, planks, and doors; the jawbones furnished an excellent thatch, or roofing material. He also saw huts constructed of the back-bones of smaller fish.The fleet now reached the coast of Caramania, after passing an island supposed to be inhabited by an enchantress very much like the Circe of the Greek fable, who was said to seduce navigators by the promise of voluptuous pleasures and then change them into fish. Nearchus now found his distresses nearly at an end, as the soil was productive of grain and fruit, and as the streams yielded an abundance of water. He soon came in view of a vast promontory on the Arabian side, (Cape Mussendoun,) which seemed completely to close the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The sailors, weary of their long voyage, earnestly besought Nearchus to land here and to march across the country to Babylon. Nearchus insisted that this would not be fulfilling the intentions of Alexander, whose command it was to survey every portion of the coast from the Indus to the Euphrates. They doubled the cape, therefore, and entered the Persian Gulf. Keeping close to the northern shore, they came at last to a tract of territory inhabited by friendly races and yielding an abundance of every fruit except the olive. They landed at the mouth of the Anamis,—the modern Minab,—and refreshed themselves after their long hardships. They reposed under the shade of palms, and conversed gayly of the dangers they had escaped and the wonders they had seen. A party wandered from the coast towards the interior, and, to their surprise and joy, met a man clothed in the Greek chlamys and speaking the Greek language. Theyasked him who he was and what country he was from. He replied that he belonged to the army of Alexander, and that the camp was not far off. Transported with delight, they took the stranger to Nearchus, whom he told that Alexander was at five days' journey from the sea.Nearchus, upon receiving this intelligence, caused his ships to be drawn on shore, a rampart to be built round them, and repairs to be commenced upon them, while he, Archius, a lieutenant, and six sailors should set out to find the camp of the king. As they approached the outposts, soldiers sent forward to meet them by Alexander, who had been informed of their coming, did not recognise them, on account of their changed dress and haggard aspect. Alexander received them with kindness, but in deep sorrow, for he had conceived the idea that the eight persons before him were all that had survived the perils of the sea. "You two have returned," he said, "you and Archius, safe and sound, and this alone renders the loss of my fleet endurable: tell me in what manner perished my vessels and my army." Upon learning the safety of the entire expedition, he is said to have burst into a flood of tears, and to have sworn that he derived more pleasure from this event than from the entire conquest of Asia. He offered sacrifices to Jupiter, Hercules, Apollo, and Neptune. He then proposed that Nearchus should repose from his trials, and that another should conduct the fleet to Susa, the capital of Susiana. Nearchus thought it unjust, however, that the glory of completing a task which he had so successfully begun should be taken from him, and retained the command. He was obliged to fight his way back to the sea through warlike and hostile tribes.The rest of the voyage, along the coasts of Caramania and Persis,—the modern Fars,—was comparatively easy, orders having been given by Alexander that Nearchus should find at intervals supplies of every species of provisions. On the 24th of February, in the year 325b.c., the fleet arrived atthe mouth of the Euphrates. Nearchus learned that Alexander had already reached Susa, which was situated some forty miles towards the interior upon the borders of the Tigris. He therefore ascended that river, and, at a bridge newly thrown over it for the passage of Alexander's army, the junction of the long-separated naval and land forces took place. Nearchus received a crown of gold for his success in the expedition; the pilot was rewarded with a crown of smaller size, and the debts of the army were discharged by Alexander.The voyage had occupied nearly five months, and the distance sailed was not far from fifteen hundred miles, if the sinuosities and indentations of the coast are included, and twelve hundred in a straight line. Half of this period of five months must be considered to have been spent upon the land, in surveys of the coast, in repairs of the vessels, and in forays in search of food and water. The same route is now usually traversed by merchant vessels in the space of three weeks. Nothing can give a better idea of the immense service Nearchus was thought to have rendered the state, than the fact that it was in the convivialities of a banquet in his honor, a year later, that Alexander abandoned himself to the excesses which resulted in his death.Eudoxus, the next navigator in chronological order, was a native of Cyzicus, in Mysia, and was sent by its citizens, in the third centuryb.c., upon a mission connected with the promotion of geographical science, to Alexandria, then the seat of maritime enterprise. He became strongly imbued with the spirit of exploration and investigation which reigned there, and succeeded in inducing Ptolemy Euergetes, the reigning king, to fit out a naval armament, and to send it under his command upon an expedition down the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea. He appears to have made a successful voyage, for he returned with a cargo of aromatics and precious stones. It is supposed that he sailed down the Red Sea, and, passing out by the Straits of Babelmandel, followed the southern coast of Arabia as far asthe Persian Gulf: it is altogether unlikely that he reached the shores of India. Euergetes plundered him of his wealth upon his return, but died soon after, leaving the throne to his widow Cleopatra.The queen took Eudoxus into favor, and sent him upon a fresh voyage. He seems to have been driven by unfavorable winds upon the coast of Abyssinia, where he made advantageous bargains with the inhabitants. He rescued from the water a fragment of a wreck,—the prow of a vessel which, from a sculpture representing the figure of a horse, seemed to have come from the West. This prow was exhibited by Eudoxus in the harbor of Alexandria, and was declared by some mariners from Cadiz to be of the precise form peculiar to large vessels which went from that port to fish upon the coast of Mauritania, or Morocco. It was evident, therefore, to the ardent mind of Eudoxus, that this fragment of a wrecked vessel, left to the mercy of the waves, had performed the grand maritime problem of antiquity,—the circuit of Africa. He abandoned himself with enthusiastic credulity to the enticing hope that he might himself succeed in achieving this darling object of the ambition of princes, kings, and states.He determined to renounce the deceitful patronage of courts, and to start with a new expedition from Cadiz. He went thither by way of Massilia and other trading settlements, and urged all who were animated by the spirit of progress to follow him. He thus succeeded in equipping an armada, consisting of one ship and two large boats, on board of which were not only goods and provisions and the necessary crews, but artisans, scientific men, and musicians. The very ardor and extravagance of their hopes, and perhaps, too, the undue gayety in which they took their departure, unfitted them to encounter the dangers and hardships of African discovery. The crew were frightened at the swell of the open sea through which Eudoxus wished to make his way, and insisted upon following the shore, accordingto the usual cautious method of those days. The consequence was that the ship was stranded, and the cargo was with difficulty saved. Eudoxus prosecuted the voyage in a single ship of lighter construction, till he came to a race of people who spoke, as he thought, the same language as those he had met on the opposite side of the continent. Thinking this discovery enough for the expedition in its now enfeebled state, he returned to Spain and equipped another small fleet, better fitted to buffet the waves of the open sea.He again set forth; but the narrative, as handed down by Strabo, breaks off at this point, and we are without information upon the results of the enterprise. It is true that rumor and fable have supplied the place of authentic facts, and that Eudoxus is described by one version as having actually circumnavigated Africa; by another, as having come to a race of people who were born dumb; and by another, as having fallen in with a nation who had no mouths, but received their food through an orifice in the nose. These exaggerations are unworthy of notice; and they do not seem to have thrown discredit upon the account of the earlier experience of Eudoxus, which ranks among the most esteemed narratives of ancient maritime adventure.We have thus given, in some detail, descriptions of all the noteworthy experiments in navigation previous to the birth of Christ. Two features, it will be at once remarked, characterized all these efforts:—1st, The only reliable propelling force continued to lie in the oars; and, 2d, no sailor ventured out of sight of land, unless, as when crossing the Mediterranean, he knew that other lands lay beyond the visible horizon. We close this division of the subject with the general observation, that the opening of the Christian era found the world almost entirely under Roman dominion,—one which preferred extending its sway by land to prosecuting discovery by sea. The Mediterranean was, thus far, the only seat of commerce and the exclusivescene of navigation. Though Hanno and Eudoxus had indeed passed the Pillars of Hercules, and had coasted along the African shore as far as the negro territories, and though Pytheas, proceeding to the north, had visited—still hugging the land—the Baltic and the British Channel, their expeditions must be considered as at once venturesome and futile, for the age was not able to repeat them, and totally failed to make them useful either to geography or commerce. As long as the centre of power, of luxury, of wealth, remains within the Mediterranean, as long as Tyre, Sidon, Rome, Carthage, successively control the destinies of the world, so long shall we find mankind lacking both the motive and the means to seek new worlds, by sea, beyond. Time, however, will furnish both the motive and the means: we shall find the one, as we proceed, in the Spice Islands of the East, the other in the Mariner's Compass. The next division of our subject will narrate how the contests between the Crescent and the Cross over the tomb of Christ brought Europe and Asia into contact and acquaintanceship; and how the commerce and intercourse which were the immediate consequences led to that general and absorbing interest in the sea and ships which eventually produced Columbus and Magellan. The influence of nutmeg and cinnamon upon the spread of the gospel and the development of science is a theme which we shall show to be not unworthy of earnest and philosophical inquiry.SUPPOSED FORM OF THE SHIPS OF NEARCHUS.VENETIAN GALLEY OF THE TENTH CENTURY.Section II.FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE APPLICATION OF THE MAGNETIC NEEDLE TO EUROPEAN NAVIGATION, A.D. 1300.CHAPTER VIII.NAVIGATION DURING THE ROMAN EMPIRE—THE RISE OF VENICE AND GENOA—THE CRUSADES—THEIR EFFECT UPON COMMERCE—WEDDING OF THE ADRIATIC—CREATION OF THE FRENCH NAVY—INTRODUCTION OF EASTERN ART INTO EUROPE—MAPS OF THE MIDDLE AGES—REMOTE EFFECT OF THE CRUSADES UPON GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE.We have taken the birth of Christ as a point of departure in the history of navigation, merely because of the prominence of that event in the annals of the world, not on account of any connection that it has with the chronicles of the sea. So far from that, the first five centuries of the Christian era are an absolute blank in all matters which pertain to our subject. The Roman Empire rose and fell; and its rise and fall concerned the Mediterranean only. Not even Julius Cæsar, the greatest man in Roman history, has a place in maritime records; unless, when crossing the Adriatic in a fishing-boat during a storm, his memorable words of encouragement to the fisherman, "Fear nothing! you carry Cæsar and his fortunes!" are sufficient to connect himwith the sea. Neither Pompey, nor Sylla, nor Augustus, nor Nero, nor Titus, nor Constantine, nor Theodosius, nor Attila, can claim part or lot in the dominion of man over the ocean. And so we glide rapidly over five centuries.Upon the invasion of Italy by the barbarians,A.D.476, the Veneti, a tribe dwelling upon the northeastern shores of the Adriatic, escaped from their ravages by fleeing to the marshes and sandy inlets formed by the deposits of the rivers which there fall into the gulf. Here they were secure; for the water around them was too deep to allow of an attack from the land, and too shallow to admit the approach of ships from the sea. Their only resource was the water and the employments it afforded. At first they caught fish; then they made salt, and finally engaged in maritime traffic. Early in the seventh century their traders were known at Constantinople, in the Levant, and at Alexandria. Their city soon covered ninety islands, connected together by bridges. They established mercantile factories at Rome, and extended their authority into Istria and Dalmatia. In the eighth century they chased the pirates, and in the ninth they fought the Saracens. At this period Genoa, too, rose into notice, and the Genoese and the Venetians at once became commercial rivals and the monopolists of the Mediterranean.And now Peter the Hermit, barefooted and penniless, inveighing against the atrocities of the Turks towards Christians at Jerusalem, exhorted the warriors of the Cross to take up arms against the infidels. He inspired all Europe with an enthusiasm like his own, and enlisted a million followers in the cause. The passion of the age was for war, peril, and adventure; and fighting for the Sepulchre was a more agreeable method of doing penance than wearing sackcloth or mortifying the flesh. The First Crusade, a motley array of knights, spendthrifts, barons, beggars, women, and children, set out upon their wild career. Then came the Second, the Third, and theFourth. Crusading was the amusement and occupation of two centuries. Two millions of Europeans perished in the cause before it was abandoned. A few words concerning its effect upon the civilization of Europe are necessary here, in direct pursuance of our subject.During their stay in Palestine the Crusaders learned, and in a measure acquired, the habits of Eastern life. They brought back with them a taste for the peculiar products of that region,—jewels, silks, cutlery, perfumes, spices. A brisk commerce through the length and breadth of the Mediterranean was the speedy consequence. Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Venice, covered the waters of their inland sea with sails, trafficking from the ports of Italy to those of Syria and Egypt. In every maritime city conquered by the Crusaders, trading-stations and bazaars were established. Marseilles obtained from the kings of Jerusalem privileges and monopolies of trade upon their territory. Venice surpassed all her rivals in the splendor and extent of her commerce, and it was for this that the Pope, Alexander III., sent the Doge the famous nuptial ring with which, in assertion of his naval supremacy, "to wed the Adriatic." The ceremony was performed from the deck of the Bucentaur, or state-galley, with every possible accompaniment of pomp and parade. The vessel was crowned with flowers like a bride, and amid the harmonies of music and the acclamations of the spectators the ring was dropped into the sea. The Republic and the Adriatic, long betrothed, were now indissolubly wedded. This ceremony was repeated from year to year.The Normans, the Danes, the Dutch, imitated the example of the Italians, or, as they were then called, the Lombards, but were rather occupied in conveying provisions to the armies than in trading for their own account.It was during the Crusades that the French navy was created. Philip Augustus, who, on his way to Syria, and thence home again, could not have remained insensible to the advantages of possessing a strong force upon the ocean, formed, upon his return, the nucleus of a national fleet, for the purpose of defending his coasts either against pirates or foreign invasion.THE DOGE OF VENICE WEDDING THE ADRIATIC.While the necessity of transporting articles from the East to supply the demand thus created in the West gave a stimulus to commerce and navigation, manufactures were encouraged and developed by the operation of the same cause. The Italians learned from the Greeks the art of weaving silk, which soon resulted in the weaving of cloth of gold and silver. They learned to mould glass in a multitude of new and curious forms. From the manufactories of Syria, where stuffs were made of camels' hair, improvements were introduced into the manufactures of Europe, where they were woven of no other material than lambs' wool. Palestine also suggested to crusaders returning home the advantages of windmills for grinding flour. Arabia furnished the art of tempering arms and polishing steel, of chasing gold and silver, of mounting stones in rich and massive settings. Constantinople furnished the Christians with many splendid specimens of ancient art,—groups, statues, and the Corinthian horses, and thus awakened European taste.Nearly all the Gothic monuments of Europe which still excite the admiration of the tourist owe their existence to this communication with the Greeks by means of the Crusades, and to the wonder which seized the Frank and Lombard at the sight of the churches and palaces of Byzantium. The Europeans carried back with them the architecture of the Saracens. Saint Mark's at Venice was built from the plans, and under the direction, of an unbeliever. The Cathedral and Spire of Strasburg, with their gigantic and yet delicate proportions, the Minster of Amiens, the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, were constructed in close imitation of the chef-d'œuvres of Eastern art. Painting upon glass was also brought from Constantinople, and the early painters of Christendom were speedily employed in tracing incolors, upon the windows of abbeys and cathedrals, the exploits of the Crusaders and the triumphs of the Cross.From the Arabs and the Greeks, too, the Europeans received their first lessons in the natural and exact sciences. Imperfect and incomplete as were the astronomy, the botany, the mathematics, and the geography of the Arabians, they were far in advance of the same professions as understood and practised in Europe. The languages were improved and enriched by the association and exchange of ideas into which English, Germans, Italians, and French were forced. The confusion of tongues, which was as complete as at Babel, was somewhat corrected by the harmony of interest and oneness of purpose which animated all, of whatever name and lineage, who gathered around the Sepulchre.It is obvious, therefore, that the effect of the Crusades, so far as it is the object of a work like the present to trace and delineate it, was to give the people of Europe a new motive for maintaining an intercourse with the people of Asia. They had seen their superior civilization, and sought to introduce it among themselves. They had learned to appreciate their skill in the arts, and resolved to acclimate those arts at home. They had accustomed themselves to many articles of luxury, which had become articles of necessity, and which it was now essential, therefore, to transport from the Levant, from the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, to the Bay of Venice and the Gulf of Genoa. There was a demand, in short, in the West, for the products, the manufactures, the arts, of the East. Here was the origin of the immense Eastern commerce which now fell into the hands of the Genoese and Venetians, and which, resulting from the Crusades, compelled us to the digression we have made. It is not our purpose, however, to refer more at length to this commerce, as it was carried on upon seas which had been navigated for twenty centuries; and we must hasten forward to the period when new paths were laid out over the immensity of the waters.A map, published just anterior to the First Crusade, fully displaysthe ignorance which then prevailed in geographical science. The sea, as in the age of Homer, is made to surround the world as a river, the land being divided into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Africa and Asia are joined together in the South, and the Indian Ocean is an inland sea. Asia is as large as the other two continents combined. On the east there is a small spot indicated as the position of the Garden of Eden by the wordsHic est Paradisus. Europe and Africa are separated from Asia by a long canal, which may be either the Nile or the Hellespont. Africa is still considered the land of mystery and fable: its northern part only is considered inhabitable, the south being even unapproachable, on account of the torrents of flame poured on it by the sun. The Frozen Ocean, the Baltic, the White Sea, and the Caspian, are all united. The Northern regions are represented as forming one single island. Scandinavia is made the birthplace and residence of the Amazons, the famous women-warriors to whom antiquity had given a home in the Caucasus.We shall, in due order, proceed to show that the indirect and remote effect of the Crusades, and of the intercourse produced by them between two totally separated regions, was to induce theDiscovery of America, theDoubling of the Cape of Good Hope, and thePassage of the Straitsat the southern extremity of Patagonia,—results due toColumbus,Vasco da Gama, andMagellan, every one of whom were seeking, in the voyages which have rendered them immortal, another passage to the Indies than that held by the Italians—so far as they could prosecute it in vessels upon the Mediterranean. But, before we can proceed from the coasting enterprises of the Lombards upon the land-locked waters of their inland sea, to the daring ventures of the Portuguese and Spaniards upon the raging billows of the Tropical and South Atlantic, we must turn for a moment to the North of Europe, and inquire into the maritime achievements of the Anglo-Saxons and the Northmen during the Dark and Middle Ages.DANISH VESSEL OF THE TENTH CENTURY: FROM AN INSCRIPTION.CHAPTER IX.THE SCANDINAVIAN SAILORS—THEIR PIRACIES AND COMMERCE—THE ANGLO-SAXONS—ALFRED THE GREAT A SHIP-BUILDER—THE VOYAGE OF BEOWULF—DISCOVERY OF ICELAND BY THE DANES—DISCOVERY OF GREENLAND—THE VOYAGE OF BJARNI AND LEIF TO THE AMERICAN CONTINENT—THEIR DISCOVERY OF NEWFOUNDLAND, NOVA SCOTIA, NANTUCKET, AND MASSACHUSETTS—ADVENTURES OF THORWALD AND THORFINN—COMPARISON OF THE DISCOVERIES OF THE NORTHMEN WITH THOSE OF COLUMBUS.The nations inhabiting the borders of the Baltic and the coasts of Norway, as well as those dwelling on the shores of the German Ocean, were situated quite as favorably for maritime enterprise as those upon the banks of the Mediterranean. Though their earliest expeditions by sea were not stimulated by the same cause,—the desire for commercial intercourse,—they arose from causes equally active. While the Mediterranean countries possessed a fruitful soil and a balmy climate, those of the North, under a sky comparatively ungenial, affordedtheir inhabitants but a few of the articles which they needed: they were led, therefore, to increase their power by sea, in order to establish themselves in more favored climes, or at least to obtain from them by plunder what their own country could not furnish. Thus they neglected the arts of agriculture, and became inured to a life of piracy upon the sea. They spent their lives in planning and executing maritime expeditions. Fathers gave fleets to their sons, and bade them seek their fortune on the ocean-highway. The ships, at first small,—being mere barks propelled by twelve oars,—came at last to be capable of carrying one hundred or one hundred and twenty men. They were supplied with stones, arrows, ropes with which to overset small vessels, and grappling-irons with which to come to close quarters.It would be remote from our purpose to notice these piratical excursions, were it not that they sometimes resulted in discovery or commerce. Many of the marauders settled permanently in England in the seventh century, and established there the Anglo-Saxon dominion. Alfred, their most celebrated king, obliged to defend his territory from the Danes, turned his attention zealously to every thing connected with ships, commerce, discovery, and geography, and became the first founder of that naval power which was at a later period to be the world's dread and admiration. The idea of ship-building once conceived, it was prosecuted with astonishing vigor. Alfred not only multiplied their number, but introduced material improvements. Towards the latter part of his reign, his fleet numbered one hundred sail: it was divided into small squadrons and stationed at various places along the coast.The oldest epic in any modern language, the Anglo-Saxon poem of "Beowulf," the Sea-Goth, written in forty-three cantos, and containing some six thousand lines, is occupied mainly in narrating the marvellous exploits of its hero, his combats with a pestilential fire-drake, and his slaying of "a grim giant named Grendel, a descendant of Cain." It incidentally describes avoyage made by Beowulf previous to the ninth century, and from this we may gather a few details, at best barren and unsatisfactory, of the equipments of a vessel in those days. In the extract which we give, the word "sea-nose" will readily be understood as meaning headland, or promontory:"When the king had awaitedThe time he should stay,Came many to fareOn the billows so free.His ship they bore outTo the brim of the ocean,And his comrades sat downAt their oars as he bade.A word could controlHis good fellows, the Shylds.On the deck of the shipHe stood, by the mast.Ne'er did I hearOf a vessel appointedBetter for battle,With weapons of war,And waistcoats of wool,And axes and swords.*    *    *    *The ship was on the waves,Boat under the cliffs.The barons readyTo the prow mounted.The chieftains boreOn the naked breastBright ornaments,War-gear, Goth-like.The men shoved off,Men on their willing way,The bounden wood.Then went over the sea-waves,Hurried by the wind,The ship with foamy neck,Most like a sea-fowl,Till about one hourOf the second dayThe curved prowHad passed onward.So that the sailorsThe land saw,The shore-cliffs shining,Mountains steep,And broad sea-noses.Then was the sea-sailingOf the Earl at an end.God thanked heThat to him the sea-journeyEasy had been."In the year 863, a Dane of Swedish origin, named Gardar, adventurously pushing off into the Northern Ocean, though upon an object which history has not recorded, discovered the island-rock whose appropriate name is Iceland. Eleven years later, a navigator named Ingolf colonized the country, the colonists, many of whom belonged to the most esteemed families in the North, establishing a flourishing republic. The situation of these people, isolated in the midst of an Arctic ocean, and their relation to the mother-country, compelled them to exert and develop their hereditary maritime proclivities. In 877, a sailor named Gunnbjörn saw a mountainous coast far to the west, supposed to be now concealed or rendered inaccessible by the descent of Arctic ice. Erik the Red, who had been banished from Norway for murder and had settled in Iceland, was in his turn outlawed thence in 983: he sailed to the west and discovered a land which he called Greenland, because, as he said, "people will be attracted hither if the land has a good name." He returned to Iceland, and, in the year 985, a large number of ships—according to some authorities, thirty-five—followed him to the new settlement and established themselves on its southwestern shore.In 986, Bjarni Herjulfson-Bjarni, the son of Herjulf, in a voyage from Iceland to Greenland, was driven a long distance from the accustomed track. He at last saw land to the west, and took counsel with his men as to what land it could be. Bjarni declared it his opinion that it was not Greenland. They sailed close in shore, and noticed that there were no mountains, but that the land was undulating and well wooded. They leftthe land on their larboard side, and sailed away for two days, when they saw land again. They asked Bjarni if he thought this was Greenland; and he replied that "he thought it as little to be Greenland as the other, as he saw no high ice-hills." The sailors wished to wood and water there, but Bjarni would not consent. They sailed for three days to the north, and saw a bold shore with high mountains and ice-hills. Bjarni would not land, saying, "To me this land appears little inviting." Sailing for four days more to the northeast, they came to a country which Bjarni confidently pronounced to be Greenland, where he landed and afterwards settled. Various data furnished by this narrative, in the original Icelandic records, have enabled geographers to determine the various coasts thus dimly seen by Bjarni, but upon which he did not land. They are supposed to have been those of Long Island, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.In the year 994, Leif Erikson—Leif the son of Erik the Outlaw—bought Bjarni's ship, and engaged thirty-five men to navigate it, as he intended to sail upon a voyage of discovery. He asked his father Erik to be the captain; but Erik declined, being, as he said, well stricken in years. They sailed away into the sea, and discovered first the land which Bjarni had discovered last. They went ashore, saw no grass, but plenty of icebergs, and an abundance of flat stones. From the latter circumstance they named the placeHelluland,hellusignifying a flat stone. There can be no doubt that the spot thus named is the modern Newfoundland. They went on board again, and proceeded on their way. They went ashore a second time, where the land was flat and covered with wood and white sand. "This," said Leif, "shall be named after its qualities, and called Markland," (woodland.) This is undoubtedly Nova Scotia. They sailed again to the south for two days and came to an island which lay to the eastward of the mainland. They observed dew upon the grass, and this dew, upon being touched with the finger andraised to the mouth, tasted exceedingly sweet. This appears to have been Nantucket, where honey-dew is known to abound.THE NORTHMEN IN AMERICA.They proceeded on through a tract of shoal water, which corresponds with the sound between Nantucket and Cape Cod, and appear to have run across the mouth of Buzzard's Bay, and to have ascended the Pocasset River as far as Mount Hope Bay, which they took for a lake. Here they cast anchor, and, "bringing their skin cots from the ship, proceeded to make booths." They remained during the winter, finding plenty of salmon in the river and lake. "The nature of the country was, as they thought, so good, that cattle would not require house-feeding in winter, for there came no frost, and little did the grass wither there." Their statement that on the shortest day the sun was above the horizon from half-past seven till half-pastfour enables geographers to fix the latitude of the place where they were at 41° 43′ 10″, which is very nearly that of Mount Hope Bay.One evening a man of the party was missing,—a German named Tyrker, whom Leif regarded as his foster-father. He determined to seek for him, and for this purpose chose twelve reliable men. Tyrker soon returned and said that he had been a long distance into the interior, and had found vines and grapes. "But is this true, my fosterer?" said Leif. "Surely is it true," he returned; "for I was bred up in a land where there is no want of either vines or grapes." The next morning Leif said to his sailors, "We will now set about two things, in that the one day we gather grapes, and the other cut vines and fell trees, so from thence will be a loading for my ship." The record states that the long-boat was filled with grapes. Leif gave the country the name of Vinland, from its vines.To the reader of the present day it may seem that the wild vines of Massachusetts and Rhode Island can hardly have been so prominent a feature of the native products as to have given a name to the whole region. But it is certain that six centuries later the Puritans found wild maize and grapes growing there in profusion, while the neighboring island of Martha's Vineyard received its name from the English for a precisely similar reason.Upon the return of Leif to Greenland, his brother Thorwald thought that "these new lands had been much too little explored." Leif gave him his ship, and he put out to sea, with thirty men, in the year 1002. Nothing is known of their voyage till they came to Leif's booths in Vinland. They laid up their ship, caught fish for their support, and spent a pleasant winter. They passed two years in exploring the interior, and then returned by the north, where Thorwald was killed in a battle with the Esquimaux.But a more successful discoverer than any of these was Thorfinn Karlsnefne,—that is, Thorfinn the Predestined Hero.He was a wealthy merchant of Iceland, the heir of Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian princes. He visited Greenland in 1006, where he married Gudrida, the widow of an Icelandic adventurer, and in 1007 sailed, in three ships and with one hundred and sixty men, upon a voyage to Vinland. His wife went with him, and, in the autumn of the same year, bore him a son named Snorri, who was, of course, the first of European blood born in America. From him the celebrated Swedish sculptor Thorwaldsen was lineally descended. Thorfinn remained here three years, and had many communications with the aborigines. A singular result of this relation may perhaps be traced in the names successively given to one spot. The Northmen called one of their settlements Hóp, and the Puritans, six centuries later, found that the Indians called it Haup. It would appear that they had continued, in their own tongue, the appellation bestowed upon the place in the Norse language. The Puritans anglicized it, and called it Mount Hope.We have no accounts of any further voyages made by the Northmen to America. The records were preserved in the literature of the island, but the memory of them gradually faded away from the popular mind.Several writers claim for these early navigators a degree of merit beyond that which they are willing to accord to Columbus. They reply to the argument that Bjarni's discovery of the American coast was merely accidental, as he had started in search of Greenland, that Columbus' discovery of America was accidental also, as he started in search of Asia, and as he believed the land to be Asia to the day of his death. "Besides," they say, "how different were the circumstances under which the two voyages were made! The Northmen, without compass or quadrant, without any of the advantages of science, geographical knowledge, personal experience, or previous discoveries, without the support of either kings or governments,—which Columbus, however discouraged at the outset, eventually obtained,—butguided by the stars, and upheld by their own private resources and a spirit of adventure which no dangers could repress, crossed the broad Northern ocean and explored these distant lands."This is all true; and doubtless our wonder at the success with which these early voyages were prosecuted would be augmented tenfold, could we obtain authentic information upon the character and capacity of the ships in which they were made. Nothing reliable exists upon this subject, except a few rude inscriptions; and from these, as reproduced in the engravings we have given, it would actually appear that the vessels used had no decks, and that they were partly propelled by oars. However navigation may have improved since the days of the Northmen, it is certain that no sailor would now attempt an Arctic voyage in an open boat; and when we read of the perils and sufferings of our modern Polar adventurers, it is impossible not to be amazed at the success with which the Danes and Norwegians, with their slender appliances, endured and outlived them.FISHING FOR HERRING.

CHAPTER VII.THE VOYAGE OF HANNO THE CARTHAGINIAN—HE SEES CROCODILES, APES, AND VOLCANOES—THE VOYAGE OF HIMILCON TO AL-BION—THE VOYAGE AND IGNOMINIOUS FATE OF SATASPES THE PERSIAN—THE VOYAGE OF PYTHEAS THE PHOCIAN—THE SACRED PROMONTORY—A NEW ATMOSPHERE—AMBER—RETURN HOME—THE VERACITY OF PYTHEAS' NARRATIVE—THE EXPEDITION OF NEARCHUS THE MACEDONIAN—STRANGE PHENOMENA IN THE HEAVENS—THE ICTHYOPHAGI—HOUSES BUILT OF THE BONES OF WHALES—FISH FLOUR—A BATTLE WITH WHALES—AN UNEXPECTED MEETING—THE DISTANCE TRAVERSED BY NEARCHUS—THE VOYAGE OF EUDOXUS ALONG THE AFRICAN COAST—STATE OF NAVIGATION AT THE OPENING OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA.At a period which it is no longer possible to settle with precision, but certainly anterior to the fifth centuryb.c., the Carthaginians, then in the height of their maritime and commercial prosperity, ordered a navigator by the name of Hanno to make a voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and to found cities along the western shore of Africa. He set sail with a fleet of sixty vessels, each of which was impelled by fifty oars. He carried with him thirty thousand men and women, with abundant supplies and provisions. Within a week after passing the straits, they founded a city and erected a temple to Neptune; they also established five trading stations along the coast. They saw a race of people called Lixitæ, with whom they formed ties of friendship, and by whom they were furnished with interpreters. Continuing their course, they found another race dressed in the skins of wild beasts, who repelled them from the shore with stones and other missiles. They next came to the mouth of a river which was filled with crocodiles and hippopotami. Theysoon arrived at a coast edged with high mountains covered with trees, the wood of which was odoriferous and variously tinted. Beyond was an immense opening of the sea, bordered by plains on which they saw many blazing fires. Then they came to a large bay, in which was an island enclosing a salt-water lake, in which, again, was another island. Entering this lake in the night, they saw huge fires burning and heard the sounds of musical instruments and the cries of innumerable human beings. They next reached the fiery region of Thymiamata, whence torrents of flame poured down into the sea. Here the heat of the earth was such that the foot could not rest upon it. After four days' farther sail, they again found the land at night enveloped in flames. In the midst of these fires appeared one much more lofty than the rest: this, when seen by daylight, proved to be a very tall mountain, called the Chariot of the Gods. They soon met with a rude description of people, who had rough skins, and among whom the females were much more numerous than the males: the interpreters called themGorillæ. They endeavored to catch some of them, but only succeeded in capturing three females, who made so violent a resistance, that they were obliged to kill them and strip off their skins, which they carried back to Carthage. Being out of provisions at this point, they were unable to pursue their voyage, and returned home.This narrative, as given by Hanno himself, hardly fills two octavo pages: volumes of commentaries have been written upon it by geographers and antiquaries. The most probable of the various hypotheses formed upon it, is, that Hanno's voyage extended to Sherbro Sound, a little south of Sierra Leone. The features of man and nature, as described by Hanno, are to be found in Tropical Africa only: Ethiopians or negroes; Gorillæ, who are clearly apes, or orang-outangs; rivers so large as to contain crocodiles and river-horses. The great conflagrations of the grass, too, and the music and dancing prolongedthrough the night, are phenomena which have been observed only in the negro territories. But this hypothesis is not accepted by all geographers, one of whom gives to Hanno's course an extent of three thousand miles, while another limits it to less than seven hundred.While Hanno was thus exploring the western coast of Africa, another Carthaginian, named Himilcon, was sent by his countrymen to the North of Europe. From a very vague description of his voyage given in a Latin poem entitledOra Maritima, it is plain that he crossed the Bay of Biscay, and found, upon islands, as is asserted, but probably upon the mainland, a race of athletic people who went fearlessly to sea in barks made of skins sewed together. They crossed, in the space of two days, to a place called the Sacred Island, (Ireland,) which was not far from another island, named Al-Bion, (England.) No further details of this expedition have been preserved.Upon the establishment of the Persian sway over the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, towards the close of the fifth centuryb.c., the exploration of Africa became the peculiar province of the Persian monarchs. But this nation labored under an unconquerable aversion for the sea, and the only maritime effort of theirs on record was entirely casual in its origin, and futile in its results. It was as follows, as recorded by Herodotus:Sataspes, a Persian nobleman, having committed a crime punishable with death, was condemned by Xerxes to be crucified. One of his friends persuaded the monarch to commute the sentence into a voyage around Africa, which, he said, was much more severe, and might result advantageously to the nation. Sataspes obtained a vessel and recruited a crew in Egypt, and, sailing through the Pillars of Hercules, bent his course southward. He is represented as having beat about for many weeks, and probably reached the shores of the Great Saharan Desert. The aspect of this formidable and tempest-lashedcoast might well appall an amateur navigator accustomed to the luxurious indolence of a Persian court. He seems to have preferred crucifixion to circumnavigation, for he at once measured back his course to the Straits. He gave an incoherent account of his adventures to Xerxes, attributing his failure to the interference of an insurmountable obstacle, the nature of which he was unable to explain. Xerxes would listen to no excuse, and ordered the original sentence to be executed forthwith. Authorities differ as to the fate of Sataspes,—one asserting that he suffered the ignominious death to which he was condemned, and another alleging that he made his escape to the island of Samos.THE SACRED PROMONTORY.A colony which had been established at Massilia—now Marseilles—about six hundred years before Christ, by the Phocians, was, in the year 340b.c., at the height of its commercial prosperity. The citizens, being desirous of extending their maritime relations, sent, at this period, upon an expedition to the North ofEurope, through the Pillars of Hercules, a learned geographer and astronomer by the name of Pytheas. He started with a single ship, the finances of the city not permitting a larger outlay of means.He passed the Pillars on the sixteenth day from Massilia; and on the twentieth he arrived at the Sacred Promontory, the extreme western point of Iberia or Spain. A temple to Hercules had been erected at this spot. The inhabitants of the promontory declared, during the time of Pytheas, and, indeed, for two hundred years afterwards, that as the sun plunged at evening into the sea, they heard a hissing like that of a red-hot body suddenly dropped into water.PLAN OF PYTHEAS' VOYAGE.Following the coasts of Iberia and of Celtica, he came to the point of land now known as Finisterre, in France, and the promontory Calbium. Turning to the east, he was surprised to find himself in a wide gulf, with Celtica on his right, and an immense island on his left. The gulf was the British Channel, and the island the Al-Bion that Himilcon had vaguely discerned some centuries before. It was at this point that Pytheas may be said to have begun his career; and the discovery of Great Britain may safely be attributed to him.He described the island as having the form of an isosceles triangle, as may be seen upon the foregoing plan. Three promontories formed the three angles,—Belerium being now Land'sEnd, Cantium Cape Pepperness, and Orcas Duncansby Head. He found the inhabitants of the southern coast industrious and sociable, peaceable, honest, and sober. They raised wheat and worked rich mines of tin. As he sailed northward, along the eastern coast, he noticed that the days grew sensibly longer; and at Point Orcas, nineteen hours elapsed between the rising and the setting of the sun. He sailed still northward, and six days after leaving Orcas he came to an island, or a continent—he knew not which,—which he called Thule. As he found he could go no farther to the north, he spoke of this spot asUltima Thule, an expression which has passed into the figurative language of all modern nations as one denoting any remote point. Thule is generally considered to have been Shetland, although theories have been ardently advocated making it respectively Iceland, Sweden, and Jutland.The narrative of Pytheas, which has been thus far clear and reliable, assumes at this point a very fabulous aspect. He declares that north of Thule there was neither earth, nor sea, nor air. A sort of dense concretion of all the elements occupied space and enveloped the world. He compared it to the thick, viscid animal substance calledpulmo marinus, a sort of mollusk or medusa. He said that this substance was the basis of the universe, and that in it earth, air, and sky hung, as it were, suspended. This illusion has been explained by the dreary spectacle of fogs, mists, rains, and tempests which at this point of his voyage must have met the gaze of the daring navigator. It would have been difficult for any mind, in those early ages, to have been on its guard against the sinister impressions likely to result from the contemplation of a scene so appalling. It must be remembered that Pytheas was accustomed to the pure and transparent atmosphere, the dazzling sky, and the phosphorescent waters of the Mediterranean. It would have been astonishing if a man educated among the splendors of an almost tropical climate had not been oppressedby influences so gloomy. It was the belief of all early navigators that a point would be found somewhere without the Pillars of Hercules beyond which it would be impossible to penetrate. While timid adventurers declared they had arrived at this point hardly a week's sail from the Straits, and declared that an atmosphere of mist, darkness, and gigantic sea-weed barred their passage, Pytheas did not allow his imagination to be affected or his courage to be shaken till he found himself in presence of the sombre and formidable scenery of what, with true geographical propriety, he denominated "Thule and her utmost isles."Leaving his animal atmosphere behind him, Pytheas returned to Orcas and from thence to Cantium. Instead of following his former track through the British Channel homeward, he turned to the eastward, and arrived, in a few days' sail, at the mouth of the Rhine. He found the country here inhabited by a race of fierce barbarians. Upon the shores of a vast gulf, beyond, dwelt the Teutons and the Guttones. In this gulf was an island named Abalcia, upon whose shores the waves deposited, in spring, immense quantities of yellow amber, which the inhabitants burned instead of wood, or sold for fuel to their neighbors the Teutons. Pytheas pursued his voyage as far as a river named Tanais, now supposed to be either the Elbe or the Oder. He considered this stream to be the eastern boundary of Celtica, in which he included Germania. He now turned his face homeward, and, coasting along the shores of Celtica and Iberia, arrived without accident or adventure at Massilia. He had sailed one hundred and eighty-six thousand stadia, or eleven thousand miles: the duration of the expedition was less than a year.Geographers subsequent to Pytheas strove zealously to discredit his assertions. One denied the voyage altogether; another questioned the veracity of the narrative. Strabo was particularly hostile to Pytheas, whom he said he would prove "a liarof the first magnitude." He was thus led to make long quotations from his descriptions for the purpose of refuting them. As the original account given by Pytheas is not extant, the world is indebted to the skepticism of Strabo for all that it knows of one of the most interesting and daring maritime enterprises of antiquity.In the year 326 before Christ, Alexander of Macedon, having accomplished the conquest of Persia, and having invaded Hindostan by the north, found himself compelled, by a mutiny of his troops, to arrest his course upon the eastern bank of the river Indus. He was here seized with a desire to explore the lower course of that river, and afterwards the southern shores of Asia, a tract of coast with which the Greeks were entirely unacquainted. The object of the expedition was partly exploration, and partly to convey a portion of the army back to Babylon upon the river Euphrates. The dangers of the enterprise and the improbability of success deterred the greater part of the naval officers from attempting it, as neither the Arabian Sea nor the Persian Gulf had ever been traversed before. Nearchus, the admiral of the fleet, proposed several candidates for the perilous honor, who variously excused themselves. Nearchus at last proffered his own services, which, after some hesitation, were accepted. This selection of a commander tranquillized the soldiers and sailors intended for the expedition; for they felt that Alexander would not have sent his intimate friend upon a voyage from which he would not be likely to return. The splendor of the preparations, the beauty of the vessels, the confidence of the officers, also went far towards dissipating their fears. At the word of Alexander, says a modern poet,—"The pines descend; the thronging masts aspire;The novel sails swell beauteous o'er the curvesOf Indus: to the moderator's songThe oars keep time, while bold Nearchus guidesAloft the gallies. On the foremost prowThe monarch from his golden goblet poursA full libation to the gods, and callsBy name the mighty rivers through whose courseHe seeks the sea."Alexander accompanied his fleet to the delta of the Indus, from whence he obtained a view of the gulf. He then returned to lead his men across Gedrosia, Caramania, and Persis to Babylon. Nearchus then set sail, after offering sacrifices to Neptune and Jupiter Salvator, and ordering a series of games and gymnastic exercises. The voyage thus undertaken was an event of real importance in the history of navigation: it opened a route between Europe and the extremities of Asia. It was the source of the discoveries made in later times by the Portuguese, and the primary, though remote, cause of the successful establishment of the British in India.PLAN OF THE VOYAGE OF NEARCHUS.At the very mouth of the river they met a formidable obstacle,—a rocky bar over which the waves broke with extreme violence. Through this bar, in its softest parts, they cut a canal one-third of a mile in length, and at high tide passed through it with the fleet. They had hardly reached the open ocean before a heavy gale drove them into an indentation of land protected by an island: to this natural harbor Nearchus gave the name of Alexander. Here he caused a camp to be laid out and entrenched, and remained for twenty-four days, the soldiers subsisting chiefly on shell-fish. When the gale abatedthey again embarked, meeting with constant adventures and difficulties upon their way. One day they would pass through huge menacing rocks, so near that they touched them with their oars on either side. On another they would be compelled, on landing for water, to ascend for miles into the interior before finding fresh-water sources. A storm caused two galleys and a vessel to founder, the crews of which, however, succeeded in swimming to shore. Nearchus caused his whole army to land at this point, for they needed repose, and his shattered fleet required repairs. He met with Leonatus, whom Alexander had detached from the main body of the army to follow the coasts and keep up a communication with Nearchus. Wheat was also sent to this spot by Alexander for the fleet, and each vessel took a supply sufficient for ten days. Nearchus exchanged such sailors and soldiers as had proved inefficient, for fresh men selected from the division of Leonatus.At this point the narrative becomes strongly tinged with the usual exaggerations of the early navigators. Nearchus asserts that he observed strange phenomena in the heavens. When the sun was in the meridian, he says, no shadow was projected, and the stars which they were accustomed to see above them were now crouching close to the horizon; others, that had never before disappeared from the sky, now rose and set at intervals. The assertion in regard to shadows at noon is evidently a fabrication. Enough was known of astronomy and the motions of the heavenly bodies, in the time of Nearchus, to convince the learned that there must be a point where no shadow would be cast by a body directly beneath the sun at the summer solstice; and Nearchus, with a vanity quite usual in the conquerors and adventurers of those times, chose to assert, and he perhaps believed, that he had seen this singular phenomenon. Two circumstances will show the inaccuracy of his statement. The alleged appearance took place in the middle of the month of November, and twenty-five degrees north of the equator. Evenhad Nearchus been at this spot in midsummer, he would have seen shadows of very respectable length. Upon the coast of Gedrosia he found a people called Icthyophagi, or Fish-eaters. The mutton here tasted of fish, and Nearchus discovered that the sheep eat fish as well as the inhabitants, for the land yielded no pasturage.In one of the villages of the Fish-eaters Nearchus engaged a pilot who undertook to guide him as far as Caramania. The aspect of the coast now became less repulsive, and palm-trees, myrtles, and flowers grew wild upon the hill-sides. Such was the delight of the Macedonians at this sight, that they landed and wove garlands and wreaths of the foliage for the wives and daughters of the natives. Farther on, at a spot where the inhabitants made them presents of roasted tunny-fish—the first cooked fish they had yet received from the Icthyophagi—and where they noticed wheat-fields, they landed, and, after taking possession of the village, demanded the surrender of all their wheat. The people made a feeble resistance, and then gave up all the flour they possessed,—not wheat flour, but fish flour,—flour made by reducing fish to powder, as we make flour by pulverizing the kernels of wheat.The coast again becoming almost desert, the crew were obliged to eat the tender buds of palm-trees, and on one occasion were glad to devour seven camels which they were fortunate enough to encounter. Besides the dangers of famine, Nearchus had to contend with legions of whales, many of them one hundred and fifty feet long,—a prodigious size for inland seas like the Persian Gulf. One day he noticed a jet of water of great height and violence, and soon the air was filled with spray tossed up by a sportive herd of these monsters. The frightened sailors let drop their oars: but Nearchus encouraged them and dissipated their fears. He placed the vessels of the fleet abreast in a single line, and ordered them to advance simultaneously at full speed, as in a naval combat, and, upon approaching thewhales, to terrify them by shouts and the din of trumpets. At a given signal, the vessels started and dashed forward upon the cetaceous army: the whales plunged into the abysses of the water, and, reappearing at the sterns of the fleet, sent up a shower of spurts in derision of their timorous enemy. Nearchus found these fish so abundant that large numbers of them were stranded in every storm: the inhabitants built houses of their bones, using the larger bones for posts, planks, and doors; the jawbones furnished an excellent thatch, or roofing material. He also saw huts constructed of the back-bones of smaller fish.The fleet now reached the coast of Caramania, after passing an island supposed to be inhabited by an enchantress very much like the Circe of the Greek fable, who was said to seduce navigators by the promise of voluptuous pleasures and then change them into fish. Nearchus now found his distresses nearly at an end, as the soil was productive of grain and fruit, and as the streams yielded an abundance of water. He soon came in view of a vast promontory on the Arabian side, (Cape Mussendoun,) which seemed completely to close the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The sailors, weary of their long voyage, earnestly besought Nearchus to land here and to march across the country to Babylon. Nearchus insisted that this would not be fulfilling the intentions of Alexander, whose command it was to survey every portion of the coast from the Indus to the Euphrates. They doubled the cape, therefore, and entered the Persian Gulf. Keeping close to the northern shore, they came at last to a tract of territory inhabited by friendly races and yielding an abundance of every fruit except the olive. They landed at the mouth of the Anamis,—the modern Minab,—and refreshed themselves after their long hardships. They reposed under the shade of palms, and conversed gayly of the dangers they had escaped and the wonders they had seen. A party wandered from the coast towards the interior, and, to their surprise and joy, met a man clothed in the Greek chlamys and speaking the Greek language. Theyasked him who he was and what country he was from. He replied that he belonged to the army of Alexander, and that the camp was not far off. Transported with delight, they took the stranger to Nearchus, whom he told that Alexander was at five days' journey from the sea.Nearchus, upon receiving this intelligence, caused his ships to be drawn on shore, a rampart to be built round them, and repairs to be commenced upon them, while he, Archius, a lieutenant, and six sailors should set out to find the camp of the king. As they approached the outposts, soldiers sent forward to meet them by Alexander, who had been informed of their coming, did not recognise them, on account of their changed dress and haggard aspect. Alexander received them with kindness, but in deep sorrow, for he had conceived the idea that the eight persons before him were all that had survived the perils of the sea. "You two have returned," he said, "you and Archius, safe and sound, and this alone renders the loss of my fleet endurable: tell me in what manner perished my vessels and my army." Upon learning the safety of the entire expedition, he is said to have burst into a flood of tears, and to have sworn that he derived more pleasure from this event than from the entire conquest of Asia. He offered sacrifices to Jupiter, Hercules, Apollo, and Neptune. He then proposed that Nearchus should repose from his trials, and that another should conduct the fleet to Susa, the capital of Susiana. Nearchus thought it unjust, however, that the glory of completing a task which he had so successfully begun should be taken from him, and retained the command. He was obliged to fight his way back to the sea through warlike and hostile tribes.The rest of the voyage, along the coasts of Caramania and Persis,—the modern Fars,—was comparatively easy, orders having been given by Alexander that Nearchus should find at intervals supplies of every species of provisions. On the 24th of February, in the year 325b.c., the fleet arrived atthe mouth of the Euphrates. Nearchus learned that Alexander had already reached Susa, which was situated some forty miles towards the interior upon the borders of the Tigris. He therefore ascended that river, and, at a bridge newly thrown over it for the passage of Alexander's army, the junction of the long-separated naval and land forces took place. Nearchus received a crown of gold for his success in the expedition; the pilot was rewarded with a crown of smaller size, and the debts of the army were discharged by Alexander.The voyage had occupied nearly five months, and the distance sailed was not far from fifteen hundred miles, if the sinuosities and indentations of the coast are included, and twelve hundred in a straight line. Half of this period of five months must be considered to have been spent upon the land, in surveys of the coast, in repairs of the vessels, and in forays in search of food and water. The same route is now usually traversed by merchant vessels in the space of three weeks. Nothing can give a better idea of the immense service Nearchus was thought to have rendered the state, than the fact that it was in the convivialities of a banquet in his honor, a year later, that Alexander abandoned himself to the excesses which resulted in his death.Eudoxus, the next navigator in chronological order, was a native of Cyzicus, in Mysia, and was sent by its citizens, in the third centuryb.c., upon a mission connected with the promotion of geographical science, to Alexandria, then the seat of maritime enterprise. He became strongly imbued with the spirit of exploration and investigation which reigned there, and succeeded in inducing Ptolemy Euergetes, the reigning king, to fit out a naval armament, and to send it under his command upon an expedition down the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea. He appears to have made a successful voyage, for he returned with a cargo of aromatics and precious stones. It is supposed that he sailed down the Red Sea, and, passing out by the Straits of Babelmandel, followed the southern coast of Arabia as far asthe Persian Gulf: it is altogether unlikely that he reached the shores of India. Euergetes plundered him of his wealth upon his return, but died soon after, leaving the throne to his widow Cleopatra.The queen took Eudoxus into favor, and sent him upon a fresh voyage. He seems to have been driven by unfavorable winds upon the coast of Abyssinia, where he made advantageous bargains with the inhabitants. He rescued from the water a fragment of a wreck,—the prow of a vessel which, from a sculpture representing the figure of a horse, seemed to have come from the West. This prow was exhibited by Eudoxus in the harbor of Alexandria, and was declared by some mariners from Cadiz to be of the precise form peculiar to large vessels which went from that port to fish upon the coast of Mauritania, or Morocco. It was evident, therefore, to the ardent mind of Eudoxus, that this fragment of a wrecked vessel, left to the mercy of the waves, had performed the grand maritime problem of antiquity,—the circuit of Africa. He abandoned himself with enthusiastic credulity to the enticing hope that he might himself succeed in achieving this darling object of the ambition of princes, kings, and states.He determined to renounce the deceitful patronage of courts, and to start with a new expedition from Cadiz. He went thither by way of Massilia and other trading settlements, and urged all who were animated by the spirit of progress to follow him. He thus succeeded in equipping an armada, consisting of one ship and two large boats, on board of which were not only goods and provisions and the necessary crews, but artisans, scientific men, and musicians. The very ardor and extravagance of their hopes, and perhaps, too, the undue gayety in which they took their departure, unfitted them to encounter the dangers and hardships of African discovery. The crew were frightened at the swell of the open sea through which Eudoxus wished to make his way, and insisted upon following the shore, accordingto the usual cautious method of those days. The consequence was that the ship was stranded, and the cargo was with difficulty saved. Eudoxus prosecuted the voyage in a single ship of lighter construction, till he came to a race of people who spoke, as he thought, the same language as those he had met on the opposite side of the continent. Thinking this discovery enough for the expedition in its now enfeebled state, he returned to Spain and equipped another small fleet, better fitted to buffet the waves of the open sea.He again set forth; but the narrative, as handed down by Strabo, breaks off at this point, and we are without information upon the results of the enterprise. It is true that rumor and fable have supplied the place of authentic facts, and that Eudoxus is described by one version as having actually circumnavigated Africa; by another, as having come to a race of people who were born dumb; and by another, as having fallen in with a nation who had no mouths, but received their food through an orifice in the nose. These exaggerations are unworthy of notice; and they do not seem to have thrown discredit upon the account of the earlier experience of Eudoxus, which ranks among the most esteemed narratives of ancient maritime adventure.We have thus given, in some detail, descriptions of all the noteworthy experiments in navigation previous to the birth of Christ. Two features, it will be at once remarked, characterized all these efforts:—1st, The only reliable propelling force continued to lie in the oars; and, 2d, no sailor ventured out of sight of land, unless, as when crossing the Mediterranean, he knew that other lands lay beyond the visible horizon. We close this division of the subject with the general observation, that the opening of the Christian era found the world almost entirely under Roman dominion,—one which preferred extending its sway by land to prosecuting discovery by sea. The Mediterranean was, thus far, the only seat of commerce and the exclusivescene of navigation. Though Hanno and Eudoxus had indeed passed the Pillars of Hercules, and had coasted along the African shore as far as the negro territories, and though Pytheas, proceeding to the north, had visited—still hugging the land—the Baltic and the British Channel, their expeditions must be considered as at once venturesome and futile, for the age was not able to repeat them, and totally failed to make them useful either to geography or commerce. As long as the centre of power, of luxury, of wealth, remains within the Mediterranean, as long as Tyre, Sidon, Rome, Carthage, successively control the destinies of the world, so long shall we find mankind lacking both the motive and the means to seek new worlds, by sea, beyond. Time, however, will furnish both the motive and the means: we shall find the one, as we proceed, in the Spice Islands of the East, the other in the Mariner's Compass. The next division of our subject will narrate how the contests between the Crescent and the Cross over the tomb of Christ brought Europe and Asia into contact and acquaintanceship; and how the commerce and intercourse which were the immediate consequences led to that general and absorbing interest in the sea and ships which eventually produced Columbus and Magellan. The influence of nutmeg and cinnamon upon the spread of the gospel and the development of science is a theme which we shall show to be not unworthy of earnest and philosophical inquiry.SUPPOSED FORM OF THE SHIPS OF NEARCHUS.

THE VOYAGE OF HANNO THE CARTHAGINIAN—HE SEES CROCODILES, APES, AND VOLCANOES—THE VOYAGE OF HIMILCON TO AL-BION—THE VOYAGE AND IGNOMINIOUS FATE OF SATASPES THE PERSIAN—THE VOYAGE OF PYTHEAS THE PHOCIAN—THE SACRED PROMONTORY—A NEW ATMOSPHERE—AMBER—RETURN HOME—THE VERACITY OF PYTHEAS' NARRATIVE—THE EXPEDITION OF NEARCHUS THE MACEDONIAN—STRANGE PHENOMENA IN THE HEAVENS—THE ICTHYOPHAGI—HOUSES BUILT OF THE BONES OF WHALES—FISH FLOUR—A BATTLE WITH WHALES—AN UNEXPECTED MEETING—THE DISTANCE TRAVERSED BY NEARCHUS—THE VOYAGE OF EUDOXUS ALONG THE AFRICAN COAST—STATE OF NAVIGATION AT THE OPENING OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA.

At a period which it is no longer possible to settle with precision, but certainly anterior to the fifth centuryb.c., the Carthaginians, then in the height of their maritime and commercial prosperity, ordered a navigator by the name of Hanno to make a voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and to found cities along the western shore of Africa. He set sail with a fleet of sixty vessels, each of which was impelled by fifty oars. He carried with him thirty thousand men and women, with abundant supplies and provisions. Within a week after passing the straits, they founded a city and erected a temple to Neptune; they also established five trading stations along the coast. They saw a race of people called Lixitæ, with whom they formed ties of friendship, and by whom they were furnished with interpreters. Continuing their course, they found another race dressed in the skins of wild beasts, who repelled them from the shore with stones and other missiles. They next came to the mouth of a river which was filled with crocodiles and hippopotami. Theysoon arrived at a coast edged with high mountains covered with trees, the wood of which was odoriferous and variously tinted. Beyond was an immense opening of the sea, bordered by plains on which they saw many blazing fires. Then they came to a large bay, in which was an island enclosing a salt-water lake, in which, again, was another island. Entering this lake in the night, they saw huge fires burning and heard the sounds of musical instruments and the cries of innumerable human beings. They next reached the fiery region of Thymiamata, whence torrents of flame poured down into the sea. Here the heat of the earth was such that the foot could not rest upon it. After four days' farther sail, they again found the land at night enveloped in flames. In the midst of these fires appeared one much more lofty than the rest: this, when seen by daylight, proved to be a very tall mountain, called the Chariot of the Gods. They soon met with a rude description of people, who had rough skins, and among whom the females were much more numerous than the males: the interpreters called themGorillæ. They endeavored to catch some of them, but only succeeded in capturing three females, who made so violent a resistance, that they were obliged to kill them and strip off their skins, which they carried back to Carthage. Being out of provisions at this point, they were unable to pursue their voyage, and returned home.

This narrative, as given by Hanno himself, hardly fills two octavo pages: volumes of commentaries have been written upon it by geographers and antiquaries. The most probable of the various hypotheses formed upon it, is, that Hanno's voyage extended to Sherbro Sound, a little south of Sierra Leone. The features of man and nature, as described by Hanno, are to be found in Tropical Africa only: Ethiopians or negroes; Gorillæ, who are clearly apes, or orang-outangs; rivers so large as to contain crocodiles and river-horses. The great conflagrations of the grass, too, and the music and dancing prolongedthrough the night, are phenomena which have been observed only in the negro territories. But this hypothesis is not accepted by all geographers, one of whom gives to Hanno's course an extent of three thousand miles, while another limits it to less than seven hundred.

While Hanno was thus exploring the western coast of Africa, another Carthaginian, named Himilcon, was sent by his countrymen to the North of Europe. From a very vague description of his voyage given in a Latin poem entitledOra Maritima, it is plain that he crossed the Bay of Biscay, and found, upon islands, as is asserted, but probably upon the mainland, a race of athletic people who went fearlessly to sea in barks made of skins sewed together. They crossed, in the space of two days, to a place called the Sacred Island, (Ireland,) which was not far from another island, named Al-Bion, (England.) No further details of this expedition have been preserved.

Upon the establishment of the Persian sway over the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, towards the close of the fifth centuryb.c., the exploration of Africa became the peculiar province of the Persian monarchs. But this nation labored under an unconquerable aversion for the sea, and the only maritime effort of theirs on record was entirely casual in its origin, and futile in its results. It was as follows, as recorded by Herodotus:

Sataspes, a Persian nobleman, having committed a crime punishable with death, was condemned by Xerxes to be crucified. One of his friends persuaded the monarch to commute the sentence into a voyage around Africa, which, he said, was much more severe, and might result advantageously to the nation. Sataspes obtained a vessel and recruited a crew in Egypt, and, sailing through the Pillars of Hercules, bent his course southward. He is represented as having beat about for many weeks, and probably reached the shores of the Great Saharan Desert. The aspect of this formidable and tempest-lashedcoast might well appall an amateur navigator accustomed to the luxurious indolence of a Persian court. He seems to have preferred crucifixion to circumnavigation, for he at once measured back his course to the Straits. He gave an incoherent account of his adventures to Xerxes, attributing his failure to the interference of an insurmountable obstacle, the nature of which he was unable to explain. Xerxes would listen to no excuse, and ordered the original sentence to be executed forthwith. Authorities differ as to the fate of Sataspes,—one asserting that he suffered the ignominious death to which he was condemned, and another alleging that he made his escape to the island of Samos.

THE SACRED PROMONTORY.

THE SACRED PROMONTORY.

THE SACRED PROMONTORY.

A colony which had been established at Massilia—now Marseilles—about six hundred years before Christ, by the Phocians, was, in the year 340b.c., at the height of its commercial prosperity. The citizens, being desirous of extending their maritime relations, sent, at this period, upon an expedition to the North ofEurope, through the Pillars of Hercules, a learned geographer and astronomer by the name of Pytheas. He started with a single ship, the finances of the city not permitting a larger outlay of means.

He passed the Pillars on the sixteenth day from Massilia; and on the twentieth he arrived at the Sacred Promontory, the extreme western point of Iberia or Spain. A temple to Hercules had been erected at this spot. The inhabitants of the promontory declared, during the time of Pytheas, and, indeed, for two hundred years afterwards, that as the sun plunged at evening into the sea, they heard a hissing like that of a red-hot body suddenly dropped into water.

PLAN OF PYTHEAS' VOYAGE.

PLAN OF PYTHEAS' VOYAGE.

PLAN OF PYTHEAS' VOYAGE.

Following the coasts of Iberia and of Celtica, he came to the point of land now known as Finisterre, in France, and the promontory Calbium. Turning to the east, he was surprised to find himself in a wide gulf, with Celtica on his right, and an immense island on his left. The gulf was the British Channel, and the island the Al-Bion that Himilcon had vaguely discerned some centuries before. It was at this point that Pytheas may be said to have begun his career; and the discovery of Great Britain may safely be attributed to him.

He described the island as having the form of an isosceles triangle, as may be seen upon the foregoing plan. Three promontories formed the three angles,—Belerium being now Land'sEnd, Cantium Cape Pepperness, and Orcas Duncansby Head. He found the inhabitants of the southern coast industrious and sociable, peaceable, honest, and sober. They raised wheat and worked rich mines of tin. As he sailed northward, along the eastern coast, he noticed that the days grew sensibly longer; and at Point Orcas, nineteen hours elapsed between the rising and the setting of the sun. He sailed still northward, and six days after leaving Orcas he came to an island, or a continent—he knew not which,—which he called Thule. As he found he could go no farther to the north, he spoke of this spot asUltima Thule, an expression which has passed into the figurative language of all modern nations as one denoting any remote point. Thule is generally considered to have been Shetland, although theories have been ardently advocated making it respectively Iceland, Sweden, and Jutland.

The narrative of Pytheas, which has been thus far clear and reliable, assumes at this point a very fabulous aspect. He declares that north of Thule there was neither earth, nor sea, nor air. A sort of dense concretion of all the elements occupied space and enveloped the world. He compared it to the thick, viscid animal substance calledpulmo marinus, a sort of mollusk or medusa. He said that this substance was the basis of the universe, and that in it earth, air, and sky hung, as it were, suspended. This illusion has been explained by the dreary spectacle of fogs, mists, rains, and tempests which at this point of his voyage must have met the gaze of the daring navigator. It would have been difficult for any mind, in those early ages, to have been on its guard against the sinister impressions likely to result from the contemplation of a scene so appalling. It must be remembered that Pytheas was accustomed to the pure and transparent atmosphere, the dazzling sky, and the phosphorescent waters of the Mediterranean. It would have been astonishing if a man educated among the splendors of an almost tropical climate had not been oppressedby influences so gloomy. It was the belief of all early navigators that a point would be found somewhere without the Pillars of Hercules beyond which it would be impossible to penetrate. While timid adventurers declared they had arrived at this point hardly a week's sail from the Straits, and declared that an atmosphere of mist, darkness, and gigantic sea-weed barred their passage, Pytheas did not allow his imagination to be affected or his courage to be shaken till he found himself in presence of the sombre and formidable scenery of what, with true geographical propriety, he denominated "Thule and her utmost isles."

Leaving his animal atmosphere behind him, Pytheas returned to Orcas and from thence to Cantium. Instead of following his former track through the British Channel homeward, he turned to the eastward, and arrived, in a few days' sail, at the mouth of the Rhine. He found the country here inhabited by a race of fierce barbarians. Upon the shores of a vast gulf, beyond, dwelt the Teutons and the Guttones. In this gulf was an island named Abalcia, upon whose shores the waves deposited, in spring, immense quantities of yellow amber, which the inhabitants burned instead of wood, or sold for fuel to their neighbors the Teutons. Pytheas pursued his voyage as far as a river named Tanais, now supposed to be either the Elbe or the Oder. He considered this stream to be the eastern boundary of Celtica, in which he included Germania. He now turned his face homeward, and, coasting along the shores of Celtica and Iberia, arrived without accident or adventure at Massilia. He had sailed one hundred and eighty-six thousand stadia, or eleven thousand miles: the duration of the expedition was less than a year.

Geographers subsequent to Pytheas strove zealously to discredit his assertions. One denied the voyage altogether; another questioned the veracity of the narrative. Strabo was particularly hostile to Pytheas, whom he said he would prove "a liarof the first magnitude." He was thus led to make long quotations from his descriptions for the purpose of refuting them. As the original account given by Pytheas is not extant, the world is indebted to the skepticism of Strabo for all that it knows of one of the most interesting and daring maritime enterprises of antiquity.

In the year 326 before Christ, Alexander of Macedon, having accomplished the conquest of Persia, and having invaded Hindostan by the north, found himself compelled, by a mutiny of his troops, to arrest his course upon the eastern bank of the river Indus. He was here seized with a desire to explore the lower course of that river, and afterwards the southern shores of Asia, a tract of coast with which the Greeks were entirely unacquainted. The object of the expedition was partly exploration, and partly to convey a portion of the army back to Babylon upon the river Euphrates. The dangers of the enterprise and the improbability of success deterred the greater part of the naval officers from attempting it, as neither the Arabian Sea nor the Persian Gulf had ever been traversed before. Nearchus, the admiral of the fleet, proposed several candidates for the perilous honor, who variously excused themselves. Nearchus at last proffered his own services, which, after some hesitation, were accepted. This selection of a commander tranquillized the soldiers and sailors intended for the expedition; for they felt that Alexander would not have sent his intimate friend upon a voyage from which he would not be likely to return. The splendor of the preparations, the beauty of the vessels, the confidence of the officers, also went far towards dissipating their fears. At the word of Alexander, says a modern poet,—

"The pines descend; the thronging masts aspire;The novel sails swell beauteous o'er the curvesOf Indus: to the moderator's songThe oars keep time, while bold Nearchus guidesAloft the gallies. On the foremost prowThe monarch from his golden goblet poursA full libation to the gods, and callsBy name the mighty rivers through whose courseHe seeks the sea."

Alexander accompanied his fleet to the delta of the Indus, from whence he obtained a view of the gulf. He then returned to lead his men across Gedrosia, Caramania, and Persis to Babylon. Nearchus then set sail, after offering sacrifices to Neptune and Jupiter Salvator, and ordering a series of games and gymnastic exercises. The voyage thus undertaken was an event of real importance in the history of navigation: it opened a route between Europe and the extremities of Asia. It was the source of the discoveries made in later times by the Portuguese, and the primary, though remote, cause of the successful establishment of the British in India.

PLAN OF THE VOYAGE OF NEARCHUS.

PLAN OF THE VOYAGE OF NEARCHUS.

PLAN OF THE VOYAGE OF NEARCHUS.

At the very mouth of the river they met a formidable obstacle,—a rocky bar over which the waves broke with extreme violence. Through this bar, in its softest parts, they cut a canal one-third of a mile in length, and at high tide passed through it with the fleet. They had hardly reached the open ocean before a heavy gale drove them into an indentation of land protected by an island: to this natural harbor Nearchus gave the name of Alexander. Here he caused a camp to be laid out and entrenched, and remained for twenty-four days, the soldiers subsisting chiefly on shell-fish. When the gale abatedthey again embarked, meeting with constant adventures and difficulties upon their way. One day they would pass through huge menacing rocks, so near that they touched them with their oars on either side. On another they would be compelled, on landing for water, to ascend for miles into the interior before finding fresh-water sources. A storm caused two galleys and a vessel to founder, the crews of which, however, succeeded in swimming to shore. Nearchus caused his whole army to land at this point, for they needed repose, and his shattered fleet required repairs. He met with Leonatus, whom Alexander had detached from the main body of the army to follow the coasts and keep up a communication with Nearchus. Wheat was also sent to this spot by Alexander for the fleet, and each vessel took a supply sufficient for ten days. Nearchus exchanged such sailors and soldiers as had proved inefficient, for fresh men selected from the division of Leonatus.

At this point the narrative becomes strongly tinged with the usual exaggerations of the early navigators. Nearchus asserts that he observed strange phenomena in the heavens. When the sun was in the meridian, he says, no shadow was projected, and the stars which they were accustomed to see above them were now crouching close to the horizon; others, that had never before disappeared from the sky, now rose and set at intervals. The assertion in regard to shadows at noon is evidently a fabrication. Enough was known of astronomy and the motions of the heavenly bodies, in the time of Nearchus, to convince the learned that there must be a point where no shadow would be cast by a body directly beneath the sun at the summer solstice; and Nearchus, with a vanity quite usual in the conquerors and adventurers of those times, chose to assert, and he perhaps believed, that he had seen this singular phenomenon. Two circumstances will show the inaccuracy of his statement. The alleged appearance took place in the middle of the month of November, and twenty-five degrees north of the equator. Evenhad Nearchus been at this spot in midsummer, he would have seen shadows of very respectable length. Upon the coast of Gedrosia he found a people called Icthyophagi, or Fish-eaters. The mutton here tasted of fish, and Nearchus discovered that the sheep eat fish as well as the inhabitants, for the land yielded no pasturage.

In one of the villages of the Fish-eaters Nearchus engaged a pilot who undertook to guide him as far as Caramania. The aspect of the coast now became less repulsive, and palm-trees, myrtles, and flowers grew wild upon the hill-sides. Such was the delight of the Macedonians at this sight, that they landed and wove garlands and wreaths of the foliage for the wives and daughters of the natives. Farther on, at a spot where the inhabitants made them presents of roasted tunny-fish—the first cooked fish they had yet received from the Icthyophagi—and where they noticed wheat-fields, they landed, and, after taking possession of the village, demanded the surrender of all their wheat. The people made a feeble resistance, and then gave up all the flour they possessed,—not wheat flour, but fish flour,—flour made by reducing fish to powder, as we make flour by pulverizing the kernels of wheat.

The coast again becoming almost desert, the crew were obliged to eat the tender buds of palm-trees, and on one occasion were glad to devour seven camels which they were fortunate enough to encounter. Besides the dangers of famine, Nearchus had to contend with legions of whales, many of them one hundred and fifty feet long,—a prodigious size for inland seas like the Persian Gulf. One day he noticed a jet of water of great height and violence, and soon the air was filled with spray tossed up by a sportive herd of these monsters. The frightened sailors let drop their oars: but Nearchus encouraged them and dissipated their fears. He placed the vessels of the fleet abreast in a single line, and ordered them to advance simultaneously at full speed, as in a naval combat, and, upon approaching thewhales, to terrify them by shouts and the din of trumpets. At a given signal, the vessels started and dashed forward upon the cetaceous army: the whales plunged into the abysses of the water, and, reappearing at the sterns of the fleet, sent up a shower of spurts in derision of their timorous enemy. Nearchus found these fish so abundant that large numbers of them were stranded in every storm: the inhabitants built houses of their bones, using the larger bones for posts, planks, and doors; the jawbones furnished an excellent thatch, or roofing material. He also saw huts constructed of the back-bones of smaller fish.

The fleet now reached the coast of Caramania, after passing an island supposed to be inhabited by an enchantress very much like the Circe of the Greek fable, who was said to seduce navigators by the promise of voluptuous pleasures and then change them into fish. Nearchus now found his distresses nearly at an end, as the soil was productive of grain and fruit, and as the streams yielded an abundance of water. He soon came in view of a vast promontory on the Arabian side, (Cape Mussendoun,) which seemed completely to close the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The sailors, weary of their long voyage, earnestly besought Nearchus to land here and to march across the country to Babylon. Nearchus insisted that this would not be fulfilling the intentions of Alexander, whose command it was to survey every portion of the coast from the Indus to the Euphrates. They doubled the cape, therefore, and entered the Persian Gulf. Keeping close to the northern shore, they came at last to a tract of territory inhabited by friendly races and yielding an abundance of every fruit except the olive. They landed at the mouth of the Anamis,—the modern Minab,—and refreshed themselves after their long hardships. They reposed under the shade of palms, and conversed gayly of the dangers they had escaped and the wonders they had seen. A party wandered from the coast towards the interior, and, to their surprise and joy, met a man clothed in the Greek chlamys and speaking the Greek language. Theyasked him who he was and what country he was from. He replied that he belonged to the army of Alexander, and that the camp was not far off. Transported with delight, they took the stranger to Nearchus, whom he told that Alexander was at five days' journey from the sea.

Nearchus, upon receiving this intelligence, caused his ships to be drawn on shore, a rampart to be built round them, and repairs to be commenced upon them, while he, Archius, a lieutenant, and six sailors should set out to find the camp of the king. As they approached the outposts, soldiers sent forward to meet them by Alexander, who had been informed of their coming, did not recognise them, on account of their changed dress and haggard aspect. Alexander received them with kindness, but in deep sorrow, for he had conceived the idea that the eight persons before him were all that had survived the perils of the sea. "You two have returned," he said, "you and Archius, safe and sound, and this alone renders the loss of my fleet endurable: tell me in what manner perished my vessels and my army." Upon learning the safety of the entire expedition, he is said to have burst into a flood of tears, and to have sworn that he derived more pleasure from this event than from the entire conquest of Asia. He offered sacrifices to Jupiter, Hercules, Apollo, and Neptune. He then proposed that Nearchus should repose from his trials, and that another should conduct the fleet to Susa, the capital of Susiana. Nearchus thought it unjust, however, that the glory of completing a task which he had so successfully begun should be taken from him, and retained the command. He was obliged to fight his way back to the sea through warlike and hostile tribes.

The rest of the voyage, along the coasts of Caramania and Persis,—the modern Fars,—was comparatively easy, orders having been given by Alexander that Nearchus should find at intervals supplies of every species of provisions. On the 24th of February, in the year 325b.c., the fleet arrived atthe mouth of the Euphrates. Nearchus learned that Alexander had already reached Susa, which was situated some forty miles towards the interior upon the borders of the Tigris. He therefore ascended that river, and, at a bridge newly thrown over it for the passage of Alexander's army, the junction of the long-separated naval and land forces took place. Nearchus received a crown of gold for his success in the expedition; the pilot was rewarded with a crown of smaller size, and the debts of the army were discharged by Alexander.

The voyage had occupied nearly five months, and the distance sailed was not far from fifteen hundred miles, if the sinuosities and indentations of the coast are included, and twelve hundred in a straight line. Half of this period of five months must be considered to have been spent upon the land, in surveys of the coast, in repairs of the vessels, and in forays in search of food and water. The same route is now usually traversed by merchant vessels in the space of three weeks. Nothing can give a better idea of the immense service Nearchus was thought to have rendered the state, than the fact that it was in the convivialities of a banquet in his honor, a year later, that Alexander abandoned himself to the excesses which resulted in his death.

Eudoxus, the next navigator in chronological order, was a native of Cyzicus, in Mysia, and was sent by its citizens, in the third centuryb.c., upon a mission connected with the promotion of geographical science, to Alexandria, then the seat of maritime enterprise. He became strongly imbued with the spirit of exploration and investigation which reigned there, and succeeded in inducing Ptolemy Euergetes, the reigning king, to fit out a naval armament, and to send it under his command upon an expedition down the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea. He appears to have made a successful voyage, for he returned with a cargo of aromatics and precious stones. It is supposed that he sailed down the Red Sea, and, passing out by the Straits of Babelmandel, followed the southern coast of Arabia as far asthe Persian Gulf: it is altogether unlikely that he reached the shores of India. Euergetes plundered him of his wealth upon his return, but died soon after, leaving the throne to his widow Cleopatra.

The queen took Eudoxus into favor, and sent him upon a fresh voyage. He seems to have been driven by unfavorable winds upon the coast of Abyssinia, where he made advantageous bargains with the inhabitants. He rescued from the water a fragment of a wreck,—the prow of a vessel which, from a sculpture representing the figure of a horse, seemed to have come from the West. This prow was exhibited by Eudoxus in the harbor of Alexandria, and was declared by some mariners from Cadiz to be of the precise form peculiar to large vessels which went from that port to fish upon the coast of Mauritania, or Morocco. It was evident, therefore, to the ardent mind of Eudoxus, that this fragment of a wrecked vessel, left to the mercy of the waves, had performed the grand maritime problem of antiquity,—the circuit of Africa. He abandoned himself with enthusiastic credulity to the enticing hope that he might himself succeed in achieving this darling object of the ambition of princes, kings, and states.

He determined to renounce the deceitful patronage of courts, and to start with a new expedition from Cadiz. He went thither by way of Massilia and other trading settlements, and urged all who were animated by the spirit of progress to follow him. He thus succeeded in equipping an armada, consisting of one ship and two large boats, on board of which were not only goods and provisions and the necessary crews, but artisans, scientific men, and musicians. The very ardor and extravagance of their hopes, and perhaps, too, the undue gayety in which they took their departure, unfitted them to encounter the dangers and hardships of African discovery. The crew were frightened at the swell of the open sea through which Eudoxus wished to make his way, and insisted upon following the shore, accordingto the usual cautious method of those days. The consequence was that the ship was stranded, and the cargo was with difficulty saved. Eudoxus prosecuted the voyage in a single ship of lighter construction, till he came to a race of people who spoke, as he thought, the same language as those he had met on the opposite side of the continent. Thinking this discovery enough for the expedition in its now enfeebled state, he returned to Spain and equipped another small fleet, better fitted to buffet the waves of the open sea.

He again set forth; but the narrative, as handed down by Strabo, breaks off at this point, and we are without information upon the results of the enterprise. It is true that rumor and fable have supplied the place of authentic facts, and that Eudoxus is described by one version as having actually circumnavigated Africa; by another, as having come to a race of people who were born dumb; and by another, as having fallen in with a nation who had no mouths, but received their food through an orifice in the nose. These exaggerations are unworthy of notice; and they do not seem to have thrown discredit upon the account of the earlier experience of Eudoxus, which ranks among the most esteemed narratives of ancient maritime adventure.

We have thus given, in some detail, descriptions of all the noteworthy experiments in navigation previous to the birth of Christ. Two features, it will be at once remarked, characterized all these efforts:—1st, The only reliable propelling force continued to lie in the oars; and, 2d, no sailor ventured out of sight of land, unless, as when crossing the Mediterranean, he knew that other lands lay beyond the visible horizon. We close this division of the subject with the general observation, that the opening of the Christian era found the world almost entirely under Roman dominion,—one which preferred extending its sway by land to prosecuting discovery by sea. The Mediterranean was, thus far, the only seat of commerce and the exclusivescene of navigation. Though Hanno and Eudoxus had indeed passed the Pillars of Hercules, and had coasted along the African shore as far as the negro territories, and though Pytheas, proceeding to the north, had visited—still hugging the land—the Baltic and the British Channel, their expeditions must be considered as at once venturesome and futile, for the age was not able to repeat them, and totally failed to make them useful either to geography or commerce. As long as the centre of power, of luxury, of wealth, remains within the Mediterranean, as long as Tyre, Sidon, Rome, Carthage, successively control the destinies of the world, so long shall we find mankind lacking both the motive and the means to seek new worlds, by sea, beyond. Time, however, will furnish both the motive and the means: we shall find the one, as we proceed, in the Spice Islands of the East, the other in the Mariner's Compass. The next division of our subject will narrate how the contests between the Crescent and the Cross over the tomb of Christ brought Europe and Asia into contact and acquaintanceship; and how the commerce and intercourse which were the immediate consequences led to that general and absorbing interest in the sea and ships which eventually produced Columbus and Magellan. The influence of nutmeg and cinnamon upon the spread of the gospel and the development of science is a theme which we shall show to be not unworthy of earnest and philosophical inquiry.

SUPPOSED FORM OF THE SHIPS OF NEARCHUS.

SUPPOSED FORM OF THE SHIPS OF NEARCHUS.

SUPPOSED FORM OF THE SHIPS OF NEARCHUS.

VENETIAN GALLEY OF THE TENTH CENTURY.Section II.FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE APPLICATION OF THE MAGNETIC NEEDLE TO EUROPEAN NAVIGATION, A.D. 1300.CHAPTER VIII.NAVIGATION DURING THE ROMAN EMPIRE—THE RISE OF VENICE AND GENOA—THE CRUSADES—THEIR EFFECT UPON COMMERCE—WEDDING OF THE ADRIATIC—CREATION OF THE FRENCH NAVY—INTRODUCTION OF EASTERN ART INTO EUROPE—MAPS OF THE MIDDLE AGES—REMOTE EFFECT OF THE CRUSADES UPON GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE.We have taken the birth of Christ as a point of departure in the history of navigation, merely because of the prominence of that event in the annals of the world, not on account of any connection that it has with the chronicles of the sea. So far from that, the first five centuries of the Christian era are an absolute blank in all matters which pertain to our subject. The Roman Empire rose and fell; and its rise and fall concerned the Mediterranean only. Not even Julius Cæsar, the greatest man in Roman history, has a place in maritime records; unless, when crossing the Adriatic in a fishing-boat during a storm, his memorable words of encouragement to the fisherman, "Fear nothing! you carry Cæsar and his fortunes!" are sufficient to connect himwith the sea. Neither Pompey, nor Sylla, nor Augustus, nor Nero, nor Titus, nor Constantine, nor Theodosius, nor Attila, can claim part or lot in the dominion of man over the ocean. And so we glide rapidly over five centuries.Upon the invasion of Italy by the barbarians,A.D.476, the Veneti, a tribe dwelling upon the northeastern shores of the Adriatic, escaped from their ravages by fleeing to the marshes and sandy inlets formed by the deposits of the rivers which there fall into the gulf. Here they were secure; for the water around them was too deep to allow of an attack from the land, and too shallow to admit the approach of ships from the sea. Their only resource was the water and the employments it afforded. At first they caught fish; then they made salt, and finally engaged in maritime traffic. Early in the seventh century their traders were known at Constantinople, in the Levant, and at Alexandria. Their city soon covered ninety islands, connected together by bridges. They established mercantile factories at Rome, and extended their authority into Istria and Dalmatia. In the eighth century they chased the pirates, and in the ninth they fought the Saracens. At this period Genoa, too, rose into notice, and the Genoese and the Venetians at once became commercial rivals and the monopolists of the Mediterranean.And now Peter the Hermit, barefooted and penniless, inveighing against the atrocities of the Turks towards Christians at Jerusalem, exhorted the warriors of the Cross to take up arms against the infidels. He inspired all Europe with an enthusiasm like his own, and enlisted a million followers in the cause. The passion of the age was for war, peril, and adventure; and fighting for the Sepulchre was a more agreeable method of doing penance than wearing sackcloth or mortifying the flesh. The First Crusade, a motley array of knights, spendthrifts, barons, beggars, women, and children, set out upon their wild career. Then came the Second, the Third, and theFourth. Crusading was the amusement and occupation of two centuries. Two millions of Europeans perished in the cause before it was abandoned. A few words concerning its effect upon the civilization of Europe are necessary here, in direct pursuance of our subject.During their stay in Palestine the Crusaders learned, and in a measure acquired, the habits of Eastern life. They brought back with them a taste for the peculiar products of that region,—jewels, silks, cutlery, perfumes, spices. A brisk commerce through the length and breadth of the Mediterranean was the speedy consequence. Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Venice, covered the waters of their inland sea with sails, trafficking from the ports of Italy to those of Syria and Egypt. In every maritime city conquered by the Crusaders, trading-stations and bazaars were established. Marseilles obtained from the kings of Jerusalem privileges and monopolies of trade upon their territory. Venice surpassed all her rivals in the splendor and extent of her commerce, and it was for this that the Pope, Alexander III., sent the Doge the famous nuptial ring with which, in assertion of his naval supremacy, "to wed the Adriatic." The ceremony was performed from the deck of the Bucentaur, or state-galley, with every possible accompaniment of pomp and parade. The vessel was crowned with flowers like a bride, and amid the harmonies of music and the acclamations of the spectators the ring was dropped into the sea. The Republic and the Adriatic, long betrothed, were now indissolubly wedded. This ceremony was repeated from year to year.The Normans, the Danes, the Dutch, imitated the example of the Italians, or, as they were then called, the Lombards, but were rather occupied in conveying provisions to the armies than in trading for their own account.It was during the Crusades that the French navy was created. Philip Augustus, who, on his way to Syria, and thence home again, could not have remained insensible to the advantages of possessing a strong force upon the ocean, formed, upon his return, the nucleus of a national fleet, for the purpose of defending his coasts either against pirates or foreign invasion.THE DOGE OF VENICE WEDDING THE ADRIATIC.While the necessity of transporting articles from the East to supply the demand thus created in the West gave a stimulus to commerce and navigation, manufactures were encouraged and developed by the operation of the same cause. The Italians learned from the Greeks the art of weaving silk, which soon resulted in the weaving of cloth of gold and silver. They learned to mould glass in a multitude of new and curious forms. From the manufactories of Syria, where stuffs were made of camels' hair, improvements were introduced into the manufactures of Europe, where they were woven of no other material than lambs' wool. Palestine also suggested to crusaders returning home the advantages of windmills for grinding flour. Arabia furnished the art of tempering arms and polishing steel, of chasing gold and silver, of mounting stones in rich and massive settings. Constantinople furnished the Christians with many splendid specimens of ancient art,—groups, statues, and the Corinthian horses, and thus awakened European taste.Nearly all the Gothic monuments of Europe which still excite the admiration of the tourist owe their existence to this communication with the Greeks by means of the Crusades, and to the wonder which seized the Frank and Lombard at the sight of the churches and palaces of Byzantium. The Europeans carried back with them the architecture of the Saracens. Saint Mark's at Venice was built from the plans, and under the direction, of an unbeliever. The Cathedral and Spire of Strasburg, with their gigantic and yet delicate proportions, the Minster of Amiens, the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, were constructed in close imitation of the chef-d'œuvres of Eastern art. Painting upon glass was also brought from Constantinople, and the early painters of Christendom were speedily employed in tracing incolors, upon the windows of abbeys and cathedrals, the exploits of the Crusaders and the triumphs of the Cross.From the Arabs and the Greeks, too, the Europeans received their first lessons in the natural and exact sciences. Imperfect and incomplete as were the astronomy, the botany, the mathematics, and the geography of the Arabians, they were far in advance of the same professions as understood and practised in Europe. The languages were improved and enriched by the association and exchange of ideas into which English, Germans, Italians, and French were forced. The confusion of tongues, which was as complete as at Babel, was somewhat corrected by the harmony of interest and oneness of purpose which animated all, of whatever name and lineage, who gathered around the Sepulchre.It is obvious, therefore, that the effect of the Crusades, so far as it is the object of a work like the present to trace and delineate it, was to give the people of Europe a new motive for maintaining an intercourse with the people of Asia. They had seen their superior civilization, and sought to introduce it among themselves. They had learned to appreciate their skill in the arts, and resolved to acclimate those arts at home. They had accustomed themselves to many articles of luxury, which had become articles of necessity, and which it was now essential, therefore, to transport from the Levant, from the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, to the Bay of Venice and the Gulf of Genoa. There was a demand, in short, in the West, for the products, the manufactures, the arts, of the East. Here was the origin of the immense Eastern commerce which now fell into the hands of the Genoese and Venetians, and which, resulting from the Crusades, compelled us to the digression we have made. It is not our purpose, however, to refer more at length to this commerce, as it was carried on upon seas which had been navigated for twenty centuries; and we must hasten forward to the period when new paths were laid out over the immensity of the waters.A map, published just anterior to the First Crusade, fully displaysthe ignorance which then prevailed in geographical science. The sea, as in the age of Homer, is made to surround the world as a river, the land being divided into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Africa and Asia are joined together in the South, and the Indian Ocean is an inland sea. Asia is as large as the other two continents combined. On the east there is a small spot indicated as the position of the Garden of Eden by the wordsHic est Paradisus. Europe and Africa are separated from Asia by a long canal, which may be either the Nile or the Hellespont. Africa is still considered the land of mystery and fable: its northern part only is considered inhabitable, the south being even unapproachable, on account of the torrents of flame poured on it by the sun. The Frozen Ocean, the Baltic, the White Sea, and the Caspian, are all united. The Northern regions are represented as forming one single island. Scandinavia is made the birthplace and residence of the Amazons, the famous women-warriors to whom antiquity had given a home in the Caucasus.We shall, in due order, proceed to show that the indirect and remote effect of the Crusades, and of the intercourse produced by them between two totally separated regions, was to induce theDiscovery of America, theDoubling of the Cape of Good Hope, and thePassage of the Straitsat the southern extremity of Patagonia,—results due toColumbus,Vasco da Gama, andMagellan, every one of whom were seeking, in the voyages which have rendered them immortal, another passage to the Indies than that held by the Italians—so far as they could prosecute it in vessels upon the Mediterranean. But, before we can proceed from the coasting enterprises of the Lombards upon the land-locked waters of their inland sea, to the daring ventures of the Portuguese and Spaniards upon the raging billows of the Tropical and South Atlantic, we must turn for a moment to the North of Europe, and inquire into the maritime achievements of the Anglo-Saxons and the Northmen during the Dark and Middle Ages.

VENETIAN GALLEY OF THE TENTH CENTURY.

VENETIAN GALLEY OF THE TENTH CENTURY.

VENETIAN GALLEY OF THE TENTH CENTURY.

Section II.

FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE APPLICATION OF THE MAGNETIC NEEDLE TO EUROPEAN NAVIGATION, A.D. 1300.

NAVIGATION DURING THE ROMAN EMPIRE—THE RISE OF VENICE AND GENOA—THE CRUSADES—THEIR EFFECT UPON COMMERCE—WEDDING OF THE ADRIATIC—CREATION OF THE FRENCH NAVY—INTRODUCTION OF EASTERN ART INTO EUROPE—MAPS OF THE MIDDLE AGES—REMOTE EFFECT OF THE CRUSADES UPON GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE.

We have taken the birth of Christ as a point of departure in the history of navigation, merely because of the prominence of that event in the annals of the world, not on account of any connection that it has with the chronicles of the sea. So far from that, the first five centuries of the Christian era are an absolute blank in all matters which pertain to our subject. The Roman Empire rose and fell; and its rise and fall concerned the Mediterranean only. Not even Julius Cæsar, the greatest man in Roman history, has a place in maritime records; unless, when crossing the Adriatic in a fishing-boat during a storm, his memorable words of encouragement to the fisherman, "Fear nothing! you carry Cæsar and his fortunes!" are sufficient to connect himwith the sea. Neither Pompey, nor Sylla, nor Augustus, nor Nero, nor Titus, nor Constantine, nor Theodosius, nor Attila, can claim part or lot in the dominion of man over the ocean. And so we glide rapidly over five centuries.

Upon the invasion of Italy by the barbarians,A.D.476, the Veneti, a tribe dwelling upon the northeastern shores of the Adriatic, escaped from their ravages by fleeing to the marshes and sandy inlets formed by the deposits of the rivers which there fall into the gulf. Here they were secure; for the water around them was too deep to allow of an attack from the land, and too shallow to admit the approach of ships from the sea. Their only resource was the water and the employments it afforded. At first they caught fish; then they made salt, and finally engaged in maritime traffic. Early in the seventh century their traders were known at Constantinople, in the Levant, and at Alexandria. Their city soon covered ninety islands, connected together by bridges. They established mercantile factories at Rome, and extended their authority into Istria and Dalmatia. In the eighth century they chased the pirates, and in the ninth they fought the Saracens. At this period Genoa, too, rose into notice, and the Genoese and the Venetians at once became commercial rivals and the monopolists of the Mediterranean.

And now Peter the Hermit, barefooted and penniless, inveighing against the atrocities of the Turks towards Christians at Jerusalem, exhorted the warriors of the Cross to take up arms against the infidels. He inspired all Europe with an enthusiasm like his own, and enlisted a million followers in the cause. The passion of the age was for war, peril, and adventure; and fighting for the Sepulchre was a more agreeable method of doing penance than wearing sackcloth or mortifying the flesh. The First Crusade, a motley array of knights, spendthrifts, barons, beggars, women, and children, set out upon their wild career. Then came the Second, the Third, and theFourth. Crusading was the amusement and occupation of two centuries. Two millions of Europeans perished in the cause before it was abandoned. A few words concerning its effect upon the civilization of Europe are necessary here, in direct pursuance of our subject.

During their stay in Palestine the Crusaders learned, and in a measure acquired, the habits of Eastern life. They brought back with them a taste for the peculiar products of that region,—jewels, silks, cutlery, perfumes, spices. A brisk commerce through the length and breadth of the Mediterranean was the speedy consequence. Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Venice, covered the waters of their inland sea with sails, trafficking from the ports of Italy to those of Syria and Egypt. In every maritime city conquered by the Crusaders, trading-stations and bazaars were established. Marseilles obtained from the kings of Jerusalem privileges and monopolies of trade upon their territory. Venice surpassed all her rivals in the splendor and extent of her commerce, and it was for this that the Pope, Alexander III., sent the Doge the famous nuptial ring with which, in assertion of his naval supremacy, "to wed the Adriatic." The ceremony was performed from the deck of the Bucentaur, or state-galley, with every possible accompaniment of pomp and parade. The vessel was crowned with flowers like a bride, and amid the harmonies of music and the acclamations of the spectators the ring was dropped into the sea. The Republic and the Adriatic, long betrothed, were now indissolubly wedded. This ceremony was repeated from year to year.

The Normans, the Danes, the Dutch, imitated the example of the Italians, or, as they were then called, the Lombards, but were rather occupied in conveying provisions to the armies than in trading for their own account.

It was during the Crusades that the French navy was created. Philip Augustus, who, on his way to Syria, and thence home again, could not have remained insensible to the advantages of possessing a strong force upon the ocean, formed, upon his return, the nucleus of a national fleet, for the purpose of defending his coasts either against pirates or foreign invasion.

THE DOGE OF VENICE WEDDING THE ADRIATIC.

THE DOGE OF VENICE WEDDING THE ADRIATIC.

THE DOGE OF VENICE WEDDING THE ADRIATIC.

While the necessity of transporting articles from the East to supply the demand thus created in the West gave a stimulus to commerce and navigation, manufactures were encouraged and developed by the operation of the same cause. The Italians learned from the Greeks the art of weaving silk, which soon resulted in the weaving of cloth of gold and silver. They learned to mould glass in a multitude of new and curious forms. From the manufactories of Syria, where stuffs were made of camels' hair, improvements were introduced into the manufactures of Europe, where they were woven of no other material than lambs' wool. Palestine also suggested to crusaders returning home the advantages of windmills for grinding flour. Arabia furnished the art of tempering arms and polishing steel, of chasing gold and silver, of mounting stones in rich and massive settings. Constantinople furnished the Christians with many splendid specimens of ancient art,—groups, statues, and the Corinthian horses, and thus awakened European taste.

Nearly all the Gothic monuments of Europe which still excite the admiration of the tourist owe their existence to this communication with the Greeks by means of the Crusades, and to the wonder which seized the Frank and Lombard at the sight of the churches and palaces of Byzantium. The Europeans carried back with them the architecture of the Saracens. Saint Mark's at Venice was built from the plans, and under the direction, of an unbeliever. The Cathedral and Spire of Strasburg, with their gigantic and yet delicate proportions, the Minster of Amiens, the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, were constructed in close imitation of the chef-d'œuvres of Eastern art. Painting upon glass was also brought from Constantinople, and the early painters of Christendom were speedily employed in tracing incolors, upon the windows of abbeys and cathedrals, the exploits of the Crusaders and the triumphs of the Cross.

From the Arabs and the Greeks, too, the Europeans received their first lessons in the natural and exact sciences. Imperfect and incomplete as were the astronomy, the botany, the mathematics, and the geography of the Arabians, they were far in advance of the same professions as understood and practised in Europe. The languages were improved and enriched by the association and exchange of ideas into which English, Germans, Italians, and French were forced. The confusion of tongues, which was as complete as at Babel, was somewhat corrected by the harmony of interest and oneness of purpose which animated all, of whatever name and lineage, who gathered around the Sepulchre.

It is obvious, therefore, that the effect of the Crusades, so far as it is the object of a work like the present to trace and delineate it, was to give the people of Europe a new motive for maintaining an intercourse with the people of Asia. They had seen their superior civilization, and sought to introduce it among themselves. They had learned to appreciate their skill in the arts, and resolved to acclimate those arts at home. They had accustomed themselves to many articles of luxury, which had become articles of necessity, and which it was now essential, therefore, to transport from the Levant, from the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, to the Bay of Venice and the Gulf of Genoa. There was a demand, in short, in the West, for the products, the manufactures, the arts, of the East. Here was the origin of the immense Eastern commerce which now fell into the hands of the Genoese and Venetians, and which, resulting from the Crusades, compelled us to the digression we have made. It is not our purpose, however, to refer more at length to this commerce, as it was carried on upon seas which had been navigated for twenty centuries; and we must hasten forward to the period when new paths were laid out over the immensity of the waters.

A map, published just anterior to the First Crusade, fully displaysthe ignorance which then prevailed in geographical science. The sea, as in the age of Homer, is made to surround the world as a river, the land being divided into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Africa and Asia are joined together in the South, and the Indian Ocean is an inland sea. Asia is as large as the other two continents combined. On the east there is a small spot indicated as the position of the Garden of Eden by the wordsHic est Paradisus. Europe and Africa are separated from Asia by a long canal, which may be either the Nile or the Hellespont. Africa is still considered the land of mystery and fable: its northern part only is considered inhabitable, the south being even unapproachable, on account of the torrents of flame poured on it by the sun. The Frozen Ocean, the Baltic, the White Sea, and the Caspian, are all united. The Northern regions are represented as forming one single island. Scandinavia is made the birthplace and residence of the Amazons, the famous women-warriors to whom antiquity had given a home in the Caucasus.

We shall, in due order, proceed to show that the indirect and remote effect of the Crusades, and of the intercourse produced by them between two totally separated regions, was to induce theDiscovery of America, theDoubling of the Cape of Good Hope, and thePassage of the Straitsat the southern extremity of Patagonia,—results due toColumbus,Vasco da Gama, andMagellan, every one of whom were seeking, in the voyages which have rendered them immortal, another passage to the Indies than that held by the Italians—so far as they could prosecute it in vessels upon the Mediterranean. But, before we can proceed from the coasting enterprises of the Lombards upon the land-locked waters of their inland sea, to the daring ventures of the Portuguese and Spaniards upon the raging billows of the Tropical and South Atlantic, we must turn for a moment to the North of Europe, and inquire into the maritime achievements of the Anglo-Saxons and the Northmen during the Dark and Middle Ages.

DANISH VESSEL OF THE TENTH CENTURY: FROM AN INSCRIPTION.CHAPTER IX.THE SCANDINAVIAN SAILORS—THEIR PIRACIES AND COMMERCE—THE ANGLO-SAXONS—ALFRED THE GREAT A SHIP-BUILDER—THE VOYAGE OF BEOWULF—DISCOVERY OF ICELAND BY THE DANES—DISCOVERY OF GREENLAND—THE VOYAGE OF BJARNI AND LEIF TO THE AMERICAN CONTINENT—THEIR DISCOVERY OF NEWFOUNDLAND, NOVA SCOTIA, NANTUCKET, AND MASSACHUSETTS—ADVENTURES OF THORWALD AND THORFINN—COMPARISON OF THE DISCOVERIES OF THE NORTHMEN WITH THOSE OF COLUMBUS.The nations inhabiting the borders of the Baltic and the coasts of Norway, as well as those dwelling on the shores of the German Ocean, were situated quite as favorably for maritime enterprise as those upon the banks of the Mediterranean. Though their earliest expeditions by sea were not stimulated by the same cause,—the desire for commercial intercourse,—they arose from causes equally active. While the Mediterranean countries possessed a fruitful soil and a balmy climate, those of the North, under a sky comparatively ungenial, affordedtheir inhabitants but a few of the articles which they needed: they were led, therefore, to increase their power by sea, in order to establish themselves in more favored climes, or at least to obtain from them by plunder what their own country could not furnish. Thus they neglected the arts of agriculture, and became inured to a life of piracy upon the sea. They spent their lives in planning and executing maritime expeditions. Fathers gave fleets to their sons, and bade them seek their fortune on the ocean-highway. The ships, at first small,—being mere barks propelled by twelve oars,—came at last to be capable of carrying one hundred or one hundred and twenty men. They were supplied with stones, arrows, ropes with which to overset small vessels, and grappling-irons with which to come to close quarters.It would be remote from our purpose to notice these piratical excursions, were it not that they sometimes resulted in discovery or commerce. Many of the marauders settled permanently in England in the seventh century, and established there the Anglo-Saxon dominion. Alfred, their most celebrated king, obliged to defend his territory from the Danes, turned his attention zealously to every thing connected with ships, commerce, discovery, and geography, and became the first founder of that naval power which was at a later period to be the world's dread and admiration. The idea of ship-building once conceived, it was prosecuted with astonishing vigor. Alfred not only multiplied their number, but introduced material improvements. Towards the latter part of his reign, his fleet numbered one hundred sail: it was divided into small squadrons and stationed at various places along the coast.The oldest epic in any modern language, the Anglo-Saxon poem of "Beowulf," the Sea-Goth, written in forty-three cantos, and containing some six thousand lines, is occupied mainly in narrating the marvellous exploits of its hero, his combats with a pestilential fire-drake, and his slaying of "a grim giant named Grendel, a descendant of Cain." It incidentally describes avoyage made by Beowulf previous to the ninth century, and from this we may gather a few details, at best barren and unsatisfactory, of the equipments of a vessel in those days. In the extract which we give, the word "sea-nose" will readily be understood as meaning headland, or promontory:"When the king had awaitedThe time he should stay,Came many to fareOn the billows so free.His ship they bore outTo the brim of the ocean,And his comrades sat downAt their oars as he bade.A word could controlHis good fellows, the Shylds.On the deck of the shipHe stood, by the mast.Ne'er did I hearOf a vessel appointedBetter for battle,With weapons of war,And waistcoats of wool,And axes and swords.*    *    *    *The ship was on the waves,Boat under the cliffs.The barons readyTo the prow mounted.The chieftains boreOn the naked breastBright ornaments,War-gear, Goth-like.The men shoved off,Men on their willing way,The bounden wood.Then went over the sea-waves,Hurried by the wind,The ship with foamy neck,Most like a sea-fowl,Till about one hourOf the second dayThe curved prowHad passed onward.So that the sailorsThe land saw,The shore-cliffs shining,Mountains steep,And broad sea-noses.Then was the sea-sailingOf the Earl at an end.God thanked heThat to him the sea-journeyEasy had been."In the year 863, a Dane of Swedish origin, named Gardar, adventurously pushing off into the Northern Ocean, though upon an object which history has not recorded, discovered the island-rock whose appropriate name is Iceland. Eleven years later, a navigator named Ingolf colonized the country, the colonists, many of whom belonged to the most esteemed families in the North, establishing a flourishing republic. The situation of these people, isolated in the midst of an Arctic ocean, and their relation to the mother-country, compelled them to exert and develop their hereditary maritime proclivities. In 877, a sailor named Gunnbjörn saw a mountainous coast far to the west, supposed to be now concealed or rendered inaccessible by the descent of Arctic ice. Erik the Red, who had been banished from Norway for murder and had settled in Iceland, was in his turn outlawed thence in 983: he sailed to the west and discovered a land which he called Greenland, because, as he said, "people will be attracted hither if the land has a good name." He returned to Iceland, and, in the year 985, a large number of ships—according to some authorities, thirty-five—followed him to the new settlement and established themselves on its southwestern shore.In 986, Bjarni Herjulfson-Bjarni, the son of Herjulf, in a voyage from Iceland to Greenland, was driven a long distance from the accustomed track. He at last saw land to the west, and took counsel with his men as to what land it could be. Bjarni declared it his opinion that it was not Greenland. They sailed close in shore, and noticed that there were no mountains, but that the land was undulating and well wooded. They leftthe land on their larboard side, and sailed away for two days, when they saw land again. They asked Bjarni if he thought this was Greenland; and he replied that "he thought it as little to be Greenland as the other, as he saw no high ice-hills." The sailors wished to wood and water there, but Bjarni would not consent. They sailed for three days to the north, and saw a bold shore with high mountains and ice-hills. Bjarni would not land, saying, "To me this land appears little inviting." Sailing for four days more to the northeast, they came to a country which Bjarni confidently pronounced to be Greenland, where he landed and afterwards settled. Various data furnished by this narrative, in the original Icelandic records, have enabled geographers to determine the various coasts thus dimly seen by Bjarni, but upon which he did not land. They are supposed to have been those of Long Island, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.In the year 994, Leif Erikson—Leif the son of Erik the Outlaw—bought Bjarni's ship, and engaged thirty-five men to navigate it, as he intended to sail upon a voyage of discovery. He asked his father Erik to be the captain; but Erik declined, being, as he said, well stricken in years. They sailed away into the sea, and discovered first the land which Bjarni had discovered last. They went ashore, saw no grass, but plenty of icebergs, and an abundance of flat stones. From the latter circumstance they named the placeHelluland,hellusignifying a flat stone. There can be no doubt that the spot thus named is the modern Newfoundland. They went on board again, and proceeded on their way. They went ashore a second time, where the land was flat and covered with wood and white sand. "This," said Leif, "shall be named after its qualities, and called Markland," (woodland.) This is undoubtedly Nova Scotia. They sailed again to the south for two days and came to an island which lay to the eastward of the mainland. They observed dew upon the grass, and this dew, upon being touched with the finger andraised to the mouth, tasted exceedingly sweet. This appears to have been Nantucket, where honey-dew is known to abound.THE NORTHMEN IN AMERICA.They proceeded on through a tract of shoal water, which corresponds with the sound between Nantucket and Cape Cod, and appear to have run across the mouth of Buzzard's Bay, and to have ascended the Pocasset River as far as Mount Hope Bay, which they took for a lake. Here they cast anchor, and, "bringing their skin cots from the ship, proceeded to make booths." They remained during the winter, finding plenty of salmon in the river and lake. "The nature of the country was, as they thought, so good, that cattle would not require house-feeding in winter, for there came no frost, and little did the grass wither there." Their statement that on the shortest day the sun was above the horizon from half-past seven till half-pastfour enables geographers to fix the latitude of the place where they were at 41° 43′ 10″, which is very nearly that of Mount Hope Bay.One evening a man of the party was missing,—a German named Tyrker, whom Leif regarded as his foster-father. He determined to seek for him, and for this purpose chose twelve reliable men. Tyrker soon returned and said that he had been a long distance into the interior, and had found vines and grapes. "But is this true, my fosterer?" said Leif. "Surely is it true," he returned; "for I was bred up in a land where there is no want of either vines or grapes." The next morning Leif said to his sailors, "We will now set about two things, in that the one day we gather grapes, and the other cut vines and fell trees, so from thence will be a loading for my ship." The record states that the long-boat was filled with grapes. Leif gave the country the name of Vinland, from its vines.To the reader of the present day it may seem that the wild vines of Massachusetts and Rhode Island can hardly have been so prominent a feature of the native products as to have given a name to the whole region. But it is certain that six centuries later the Puritans found wild maize and grapes growing there in profusion, while the neighboring island of Martha's Vineyard received its name from the English for a precisely similar reason.Upon the return of Leif to Greenland, his brother Thorwald thought that "these new lands had been much too little explored." Leif gave him his ship, and he put out to sea, with thirty men, in the year 1002. Nothing is known of their voyage till they came to Leif's booths in Vinland. They laid up their ship, caught fish for their support, and spent a pleasant winter. They passed two years in exploring the interior, and then returned by the north, where Thorwald was killed in a battle with the Esquimaux.But a more successful discoverer than any of these was Thorfinn Karlsnefne,—that is, Thorfinn the Predestined Hero.He was a wealthy merchant of Iceland, the heir of Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian princes. He visited Greenland in 1006, where he married Gudrida, the widow of an Icelandic adventurer, and in 1007 sailed, in three ships and with one hundred and sixty men, upon a voyage to Vinland. His wife went with him, and, in the autumn of the same year, bore him a son named Snorri, who was, of course, the first of European blood born in America. From him the celebrated Swedish sculptor Thorwaldsen was lineally descended. Thorfinn remained here three years, and had many communications with the aborigines. A singular result of this relation may perhaps be traced in the names successively given to one spot. The Northmen called one of their settlements Hóp, and the Puritans, six centuries later, found that the Indians called it Haup. It would appear that they had continued, in their own tongue, the appellation bestowed upon the place in the Norse language. The Puritans anglicized it, and called it Mount Hope.We have no accounts of any further voyages made by the Northmen to America. The records were preserved in the literature of the island, but the memory of them gradually faded away from the popular mind.Several writers claim for these early navigators a degree of merit beyond that which they are willing to accord to Columbus. They reply to the argument that Bjarni's discovery of the American coast was merely accidental, as he had started in search of Greenland, that Columbus' discovery of America was accidental also, as he started in search of Asia, and as he believed the land to be Asia to the day of his death. "Besides," they say, "how different were the circumstances under which the two voyages were made! The Northmen, without compass or quadrant, without any of the advantages of science, geographical knowledge, personal experience, or previous discoveries, without the support of either kings or governments,—which Columbus, however discouraged at the outset, eventually obtained,—butguided by the stars, and upheld by their own private resources and a spirit of adventure which no dangers could repress, crossed the broad Northern ocean and explored these distant lands."This is all true; and doubtless our wonder at the success with which these early voyages were prosecuted would be augmented tenfold, could we obtain authentic information upon the character and capacity of the ships in which they were made. Nothing reliable exists upon this subject, except a few rude inscriptions; and from these, as reproduced in the engravings we have given, it would actually appear that the vessels used had no decks, and that they were partly propelled by oars. However navigation may have improved since the days of the Northmen, it is certain that no sailor would now attempt an Arctic voyage in an open boat; and when we read of the perils and sufferings of our modern Polar adventurers, it is impossible not to be amazed at the success with which the Danes and Norwegians, with their slender appliances, endured and outlived them.FISHING FOR HERRING.

DANISH VESSEL OF THE TENTH CENTURY: FROM AN INSCRIPTION.

DANISH VESSEL OF THE TENTH CENTURY: FROM AN INSCRIPTION.

DANISH VESSEL OF THE TENTH CENTURY: FROM AN INSCRIPTION.

THE SCANDINAVIAN SAILORS—THEIR PIRACIES AND COMMERCE—THE ANGLO-SAXONS—ALFRED THE GREAT A SHIP-BUILDER—THE VOYAGE OF BEOWULF—DISCOVERY OF ICELAND BY THE DANES—DISCOVERY OF GREENLAND—THE VOYAGE OF BJARNI AND LEIF TO THE AMERICAN CONTINENT—THEIR DISCOVERY OF NEWFOUNDLAND, NOVA SCOTIA, NANTUCKET, AND MASSACHUSETTS—ADVENTURES OF THORWALD AND THORFINN—COMPARISON OF THE DISCOVERIES OF THE NORTHMEN WITH THOSE OF COLUMBUS.

The nations inhabiting the borders of the Baltic and the coasts of Norway, as well as those dwelling on the shores of the German Ocean, were situated quite as favorably for maritime enterprise as those upon the banks of the Mediterranean. Though their earliest expeditions by sea were not stimulated by the same cause,—the desire for commercial intercourse,—they arose from causes equally active. While the Mediterranean countries possessed a fruitful soil and a balmy climate, those of the North, under a sky comparatively ungenial, affordedtheir inhabitants but a few of the articles which they needed: they were led, therefore, to increase their power by sea, in order to establish themselves in more favored climes, or at least to obtain from them by plunder what their own country could not furnish. Thus they neglected the arts of agriculture, and became inured to a life of piracy upon the sea. They spent their lives in planning and executing maritime expeditions. Fathers gave fleets to their sons, and bade them seek their fortune on the ocean-highway. The ships, at first small,—being mere barks propelled by twelve oars,—came at last to be capable of carrying one hundred or one hundred and twenty men. They were supplied with stones, arrows, ropes with which to overset small vessels, and grappling-irons with which to come to close quarters.

It would be remote from our purpose to notice these piratical excursions, were it not that they sometimes resulted in discovery or commerce. Many of the marauders settled permanently in England in the seventh century, and established there the Anglo-Saxon dominion. Alfred, their most celebrated king, obliged to defend his territory from the Danes, turned his attention zealously to every thing connected with ships, commerce, discovery, and geography, and became the first founder of that naval power which was at a later period to be the world's dread and admiration. The idea of ship-building once conceived, it was prosecuted with astonishing vigor. Alfred not only multiplied their number, but introduced material improvements. Towards the latter part of his reign, his fleet numbered one hundred sail: it was divided into small squadrons and stationed at various places along the coast.

The oldest epic in any modern language, the Anglo-Saxon poem of "Beowulf," the Sea-Goth, written in forty-three cantos, and containing some six thousand lines, is occupied mainly in narrating the marvellous exploits of its hero, his combats with a pestilential fire-drake, and his slaying of "a grim giant named Grendel, a descendant of Cain." It incidentally describes avoyage made by Beowulf previous to the ninth century, and from this we may gather a few details, at best barren and unsatisfactory, of the equipments of a vessel in those days. In the extract which we give, the word "sea-nose" will readily be understood as meaning headland, or promontory:

"When the king had awaitedThe time he should stay,Came many to fareOn the billows so free.His ship they bore outTo the brim of the ocean,And his comrades sat downAt their oars as he bade.A word could controlHis good fellows, the Shylds.On the deck of the shipHe stood, by the mast.Ne'er did I hearOf a vessel appointedBetter for battle,With weapons of war,And waistcoats of wool,And axes and swords.*    *    *    *The ship was on the waves,Boat under the cliffs.The barons readyTo the prow mounted.The chieftains boreOn the naked breastBright ornaments,War-gear, Goth-like.The men shoved off,Men on their willing way,The bounden wood.Then went over the sea-waves,Hurried by the wind,The ship with foamy neck,Most like a sea-fowl,Till about one hourOf the second dayThe curved prowHad passed onward.So that the sailorsThe land saw,The shore-cliffs shining,Mountains steep,And broad sea-noses.Then was the sea-sailingOf the Earl at an end.God thanked heThat to him the sea-journeyEasy had been."

In the year 863, a Dane of Swedish origin, named Gardar, adventurously pushing off into the Northern Ocean, though upon an object which history has not recorded, discovered the island-rock whose appropriate name is Iceland. Eleven years later, a navigator named Ingolf colonized the country, the colonists, many of whom belonged to the most esteemed families in the North, establishing a flourishing republic. The situation of these people, isolated in the midst of an Arctic ocean, and their relation to the mother-country, compelled them to exert and develop their hereditary maritime proclivities. In 877, a sailor named Gunnbjörn saw a mountainous coast far to the west, supposed to be now concealed or rendered inaccessible by the descent of Arctic ice. Erik the Red, who had been banished from Norway for murder and had settled in Iceland, was in his turn outlawed thence in 983: he sailed to the west and discovered a land which he called Greenland, because, as he said, "people will be attracted hither if the land has a good name." He returned to Iceland, and, in the year 985, a large number of ships—according to some authorities, thirty-five—followed him to the new settlement and established themselves on its southwestern shore.

In 986, Bjarni Herjulfson-Bjarni, the son of Herjulf, in a voyage from Iceland to Greenland, was driven a long distance from the accustomed track. He at last saw land to the west, and took counsel with his men as to what land it could be. Bjarni declared it his opinion that it was not Greenland. They sailed close in shore, and noticed that there were no mountains, but that the land was undulating and well wooded. They leftthe land on their larboard side, and sailed away for two days, when they saw land again. They asked Bjarni if he thought this was Greenland; and he replied that "he thought it as little to be Greenland as the other, as he saw no high ice-hills." The sailors wished to wood and water there, but Bjarni would not consent. They sailed for three days to the north, and saw a bold shore with high mountains and ice-hills. Bjarni would not land, saying, "To me this land appears little inviting." Sailing for four days more to the northeast, they came to a country which Bjarni confidently pronounced to be Greenland, where he landed and afterwards settled. Various data furnished by this narrative, in the original Icelandic records, have enabled geographers to determine the various coasts thus dimly seen by Bjarni, but upon which he did not land. They are supposed to have been those of Long Island, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.

In the year 994, Leif Erikson—Leif the son of Erik the Outlaw—bought Bjarni's ship, and engaged thirty-five men to navigate it, as he intended to sail upon a voyage of discovery. He asked his father Erik to be the captain; but Erik declined, being, as he said, well stricken in years. They sailed away into the sea, and discovered first the land which Bjarni had discovered last. They went ashore, saw no grass, but plenty of icebergs, and an abundance of flat stones. From the latter circumstance they named the placeHelluland,hellusignifying a flat stone. There can be no doubt that the spot thus named is the modern Newfoundland. They went on board again, and proceeded on their way. They went ashore a second time, where the land was flat and covered with wood and white sand. "This," said Leif, "shall be named after its qualities, and called Markland," (woodland.) This is undoubtedly Nova Scotia. They sailed again to the south for two days and came to an island which lay to the eastward of the mainland. They observed dew upon the grass, and this dew, upon being touched with the finger andraised to the mouth, tasted exceedingly sweet. This appears to have been Nantucket, where honey-dew is known to abound.

THE NORTHMEN IN AMERICA.

THE NORTHMEN IN AMERICA.

THE NORTHMEN IN AMERICA.

They proceeded on through a tract of shoal water, which corresponds with the sound between Nantucket and Cape Cod, and appear to have run across the mouth of Buzzard's Bay, and to have ascended the Pocasset River as far as Mount Hope Bay, which they took for a lake. Here they cast anchor, and, "bringing their skin cots from the ship, proceeded to make booths." They remained during the winter, finding plenty of salmon in the river and lake. "The nature of the country was, as they thought, so good, that cattle would not require house-feeding in winter, for there came no frost, and little did the grass wither there." Their statement that on the shortest day the sun was above the horizon from half-past seven till half-pastfour enables geographers to fix the latitude of the place where they were at 41° 43′ 10″, which is very nearly that of Mount Hope Bay.

One evening a man of the party was missing,—a German named Tyrker, whom Leif regarded as his foster-father. He determined to seek for him, and for this purpose chose twelve reliable men. Tyrker soon returned and said that he had been a long distance into the interior, and had found vines and grapes. "But is this true, my fosterer?" said Leif. "Surely is it true," he returned; "for I was bred up in a land where there is no want of either vines or grapes." The next morning Leif said to his sailors, "We will now set about two things, in that the one day we gather grapes, and the other cut vines and fell trees, so from thence will be a loading for my ship." The record states that the long-boat was filled with grapes. Leif gave the country the name of Vinland, from its vines.

To the reader of the present day it may seem that the wild vines of Massachusetts and Rhode Island can hardly have been so prominent a feature of the native products as to have given a name to the whole region. But it is certain that six centuries later the Puritans found wild maize and grapes growing there in profusion, while the neighboring island of Martha's Vineyard received its name from the English for a precisely similar reason.

Upon the return of Leif to Greenland, his brother Thorwald thought that "these new lands had been much too little explored." Leif gave him his ship, and he put out to sea, with thirty men, in the year 1002. Nothing is known of their voyage till they came to Leif's booths in Vinland. They laid up their ship, caught fish for their support, and spent a pleasant winter. They passed two years in exploring the interior, and then returned by the north, where Thorwald was killed in a battle with the Esquimaux.

But a more successful discoverer than any of these was Thorfinn Karlsnefne,—that is, Thorfinn the Predestined Hero.He was a wealthy merchant of Iceland, the heir of Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian princes. He visited Greenland in 1006, where he married Gudrida, the widow of an Icelandic adventurer, and in 1007 sailed, in three ships and with one hundred and sixty men, upon a voyage to Vinland. His wife went with him, and, in the autumn of the same year, bore him a son named Snorri, who was, of course, the first of European blood born in America. From him the celebrated Swedish sculptor Thorwaldsen was lineally descended. Thorfinn remained here three years, and had many communications with the aborigines. A singular result of this relation may perhaps be traced in the names successively given to one spot. The Northmen called one of their settlements Hóp, and the Puritans, six centuries later, found that the Indians called it Haup. It would appear that they had continued, in their own tongue, the appellation bestowed upon the place in the Norse language. The Puritans anglicized it, and called it Mount Hope.

We have no accounts of any further voyages made by the Northmen to America. The records were preserved in the literature of the island, but the memory of them gradually faded away from the popular mind.

Several writers claim for these early navigators a degree of merit beyond that which they are willing to accord to Columbus. They reply to the argument that Bjarni's discovery of the American coast was merely accidental, as he had started in search of Greenland, that Columbus' discovery of America was accidental also, as he started in search of Asia, and as he believed the land to be Asia to the day of his death. "Besides," they say, "how different were the circumstances under which the two voyages were made! The Northmen, without compass or quadrant, without any of the advantages of science, geographical knowledge, personal experience, or previous discoveries, without the support of either kings or governments,—which Columbus, however discouraged at the outset, eventually obtained,—butguided by the stars, and upheld by their own private resources and a spirit of adventure which no dangers could repress, crossed the broad Northern ocean and explored these distant lands."

This is all true; and doubtless our wonder at the success with which these early voyages were prosecuted would be augmented tenfold, could we obtain authentic information upon the character and capacity of the ships in which they were made. Nothing reliable exists upon this subject, except a few rude inscriptions; and from these, as reproduced in the engravings we have given, it would actually appear that the vessels used had no decks, and that they were partly propelled by oars. However navigation may have improved since the days of the Northmen, it is certain that no sailor would now attempt an Arctic voyage in an open boat; and when we read of the perils and sufferings of our modern Polar adventurers, it is impossible not to be amazed at the success with which the Danes and Norwegians, with their slender appliances, endured and outlived them.

FISHING FOR HERRING.

FISHING FOR HERRING.

FISHING FOR HERRING.

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