Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/302

 286 HISTORY OF GREECE. on no farther," a persuasion not uncommon in ancient times, and even down to Columbus, that there was a point, beyond which the ocean, either from mud, sands, shallows, fogs, or accu- mulations of sea-weed, was no longer navigable. 1 ' Skylax, after following the line of coast from the Mediterranean outside of the strait of Gibraltar, and then south-westward along Africa as far as the island of Kerne, goes on to say, that " beyond Kerne the sea is no longer navigable from shallows, and mud, and sea-weed :" T?/f 6s Kepvqe vqaov rd -Kiva OVKET'I eari TT^UTU 6tu flpaxvrijTa tfaAurr^f KOI Ktjhbv ical 0tKOf. 'Ecrri de ro i>KOf i% Soxplt TO TT^UTOQ Kal UVU-&EV 6t>, uare KEVTEIV (Sky lax, c. 109). Nearchus, on undertaking his voyage down the Indus, and from thence into the Persian gulf, is not certain whether the external sea will be fonnd navigable el 6r/ vrAwrof ye lariv 6 ravry TTOVTOC (Ncarchi Pcriplus, j>. 2: compare p. 40, ap. Geogr. Minor, vol. i, ed. Hudson). Pytheas de- scribed the neighborhood of Thule as f. sort of chaos a medley of earth, sea, and air, in which you could neither walk nor sail : OVTE yr) /ca$' avrr/v VTTTJPXEV OVTE i9aAaOiKhc,v u Qijct rqv yi]v Kal rr/v i?u?.acr aiupsiadai Kal ru GVfM- xavra, KUL TOVTOV cif uv ^Efffibv elvai ruv 6Aup, [IT/TE iropevrbv fifjre TT^UTOV VTrapxovra' rb fj.lv ovv T& Trfav/iovi ioiKor avrbf (Pytheas) sapaKEvai, TalJ.a <5e teyetv I!;  (Herod, ii, 109). Plato represents the sea without the Pillars of Herakles as impenetrable and unfit for navigation, in consequence of the large admixture of earth, mud, or vegetable covering, which had arisen in it from the disruption of the great island or continent Atlantis (Timseus, p. 25 ; and Kritias, p. 108) ; which passages are well il- lustrated by the Scholiast, who seems to have read geographical descriptions of the character of this outer sea : TOVTO icai ol rovg EKE'LVT) rorrorf laropovv- rff fayovaiv, uf mivra rsvayudrj rbv ticsi slvai %&pov Tevayog 6e iariv tkif Tt; t ETriKoXu&VTOf iidarof ov Tro/lAoi), Kal (3oTuvr}f ETTHJxiivofiEVTje Tovry. See also Plutarch's fancy of the dense, earthy, and viscous Kronian sea (some days to the westward of Britain), in which a ship could with difficulty ad- vance, and only by means of severe pulling with the oars (Plutarch, De Facie in Orbe Lunse, c. 26, p. 941). So again in the two geographical pro- ductions in verse by Rufus Fcstus Avienus (Hudson, Geogr. Minor, vol. iv, Dcscriptio Orbis Terrse, v, 57, and Ora Maritima, v, 406-415): in the first of these two, the density of the water of the western ocean is ascribed to its being saturated with salt, in the second, we have shallows, large quantities of sea-weed, and wild beasts swimming about, which the Carthngininn Him ilco affirmed himself to have seen : "Plcrumqne porro tenue tcnditur salmn, Ut vix arenas subjacentes occnlat ;