Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/303

 TERRORS OF THE UNKNOWN OCEAN. 287 Now we learn from hence that the enterprise, even by those who believed the narrative of Nekos's captains, was regarded as Exsupcrat autcm gurgitem fucus frcqucns Atquc impcditur icstus ex uligine : Vis vcl ferarum pelagus omne internatat, Mutusque terror ex feris habitat freta. iltcc olim Himilco Pcenus Occano super Spectasse semet et probasse rettulit : Haec nos, ab imis Punicorum annalibus Prolata longo tempore, cdidimus tibi." Compare also v, 115-130 of the same poem, where the author again quotes from a voyage of Himilco, who had been four months in the ocean outside of the Pillars of Hercules : u Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem, Sic segnis humor aequoris pigri stupet. Adjicit ct illud, plurimum inter gurgites Extare fucum, et socpe virgulti vice Ilctinere puppim," etc. The dead calm, mud. and shallows of the external ocean are touched upon by Aristot. Metcorolog. ii, 1,14, and seem to have been a favorite subject of declamation with the rhetors of the Augustan age. Sec Seneca, Suasoriar. i, 1. Even the companions and contemporaries of Columbus, when navigation had made such comparative progress, still retained much of these fears re- specting the dangers and difficulties of the unknown ocean : " Le tableau exage're (observes A. von Humboldt, Examen Critique dc 1'Histoire de la Ge'ographie, t. iii, p. 95) que la ruse des Pheniciens avait trace" des difficulte's qu'opposaient a la navigation an dela des Colonnes d'Hercule, de Cerne, et de 1'lle Sacre'e (lerne), le fucus, le limon, le manque de fond, et le calme per- petuel de la mer, ressemble d'une maniere frappante aux re'cits animes des premiers compagnons de Colomb." Columbus was the first man who traversed the sea of Sargasso, or area of the Atlantic ocean south of the Azores, where it is covered by an immense mass of sea-weed for a space six or seven times as large as France : the alarm of his crew at this unexpected spectacle was considerable. The sea- weed is sometimes so thickly accumulated, that it requires a considerable wind to impel the vessel through it. The remarks and comparisons of M. von Humboldt, in reference to ancient and modern navigation, arc highly inter- esting. (Examen, tit sup. pp. 69, 88, 91, etc.) J. M. Gesner (Dissertat. de Navigationibus extra Colnmnas Herculis, secte. 6 and 7) has a good defence of the story told by Herodotus. Major Rennell also adopts the same view, and shows by many arguments how much easier the circumnavigation was from the East than from the West (Geograph. Sys- tem of Herodotus, p. 680) ; compare Ukert, Geograph. dcr Griechen und