INQUIRY INTO THE SUPPOSED CIRCOUMNAVIGATION OF AFRICA BY THE ANCIENTS
By the Greek* and Arabian cosmographers the first meridian was loosely placed at the Fortunate or Canary islands: the true position of the isle of Ferro has been determined by modern observation, and the degrees of longitude proceed with singular propriety from the western limit of the old hemisphere. The absurd vanity of the Spaniards and ‘Dutch, the French and English; has variously transported this ideal line from a common and familiar term: the longitudes of Madrid and Amsterdam, of Paris and Greenwich, must now be compared, and the national diversity of speech and measure is aggravated by a new source of perplexity and confusion. The prince of geographers, the celebrated d’Anville, has shewn his judgment and impartiality by adhering to the old style.
It was the duty of the Greek poets, who described the residence and rewards of departed heroes, to adorn their fortunate islands with the gifts of perpetual spring and spontaneous plenty. A remote and hospitable land has often been praised above its merits by the gratitude of storm-beaten mariners. But the real scene of the Canaries affords, like the rest of the world, a mixture of good and evil, nay even of indigenous ills and of foreign improvements. Yet, in sober truth, the
*# The ignorance of Ptolemy, (1. iv. c.?, in Bertii Theatram Geographiæ Antiquæ. tom. i. p. 127.) has ranged the six Fortunate islands under the same meridian line, the most northern point of which is sunk as low as the latitude of the Cape de Verd islands.
¢ | small
ON THE POSITION OF THE MERIDIONAL LINE, &c. 483
‘small islands of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans may be esteemed as some of the most agreeable spots on the globe. - .The sky 1s serene, the ‘air is pure and salubrious : the meridian heat of the sun is tempered by the séa-breeze: the groves and vallies, at least in the Canaries, aré enlivened by the melody of their native birds, and a new climate may be found, at every step,: from the shore to ) the summit, of à mountainous ascent.
‘In the Atlantic or Fortunate islands of Plutarch* we acknowledge, with some hesitation, the first features of the Canaries to which Sertorius was desirous of escaping from the horrors of civil war. . The description of Plinyt is more accurate and distinct ; and his knowledge was derived from the discoveries and writings of Juba, t the most learned king that ever reigned over the Moors: The namies of the Canary islands, their number of six or seven, and their respective distance are marked; ‘though with some uncertainty. The plenty of the Orchilla weed, so useful to the dyers, will justify the appellation of the Purple Isles, and the use of a manufacture which Juba intended to establish. A multitude of dogs and goats, with the tuins of some stone buildings, announced thé more early visits, perhaps, of the Phoenicians: but these islands appear to have been destitute of inhabitants, and I must assign ta a later age the arrival of the Getulian emigrants who preserved their idiom, and soon lost the imperfect art which had conveyed them over a narrow sea. The kingdom of Juba was reduced into a province: but the Romans were satiated with empire, and they disdained, or feared, to plant a colony in the Atlantic ocean. It'is less easy to account for the neglect of the Mahometans : they were conquerors, fanatics, and
* Plutarch in Sertorio, tom. iii. p. $12, Edit. Bryan. Yet some circumstances are fabulous, and others would more easily adapt themselves to the Madeiras. If we prefer the Canaries, Lancerota and Fuerteventura, the nearest to the African shore, must be the two islands of Plutarch.
-. + Pliny (Hist. Natur, vi. 37) had likewise consulted the Periplus of Statius Sebosus, The geographer will be satisfied with d’ Anville (Géographie Ancienne, tom. iii. p. 116. ) and Cellarius (Geogrephia Antiqua, tom. ii. P. ii. p. 141.) : but the idle scholar may consult the texts of Mela, Ælian, and Solinus,-with the Commentaries of Isaac Vossius, Perisonius, and Salmasius.
? See the Life and Writings of Juba, King of Mauritania, by the Abbé Serio, in the Mémoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. iv. p. 457, |
3Q2 a merchañts ;
484 OW THE POSITION OF THE MERIDIONAL Line, &c. :
merchants; mor vould: the Great Desnt protect from theiz ambition.
the black nations of the Niges. Yet the Arsbsn geogriphers are com tent to repeat the fables of Ptolemy; aud Abulfeda’s ignorance* is betraped by the wiki sapposition: that the Fortunate islands had been overwhelmed by tlhe waves. .
White: Abulfeda deplored their loss they. were. given by: Pope Cle. ment VI.t (1344), with the title of kingdom, to Lewis de la Cerda, tke rightful theugh banished. heir of Castille. The title was vain, the grant ineffectual: the Canaries, which had been recently discovered by the Genoese, } were infested by some roving pirates from Catalonia and Bisewy, but the fret serious idea of conquest was entertained and executed by Williass de Bethancourt, a gentleman of Normandy, who sailed
from la Rochelle in seareh of these fortemate islands. Deserted-by his
country, which wes unrwillag, or unable, te support a naval enterprise,
he implored the aid and acknowledged the sovereignty of the King of
Castile; his hopes and pousedsions were transferred by sale and. isheritance to the Spaniacds, aad their blood. and hmguage: sen predo-
mminated: in the mew settleménts. In: tie space of aight. years (1400—
3408) William de Bethanceurt had completely reduced and inporfuetig pleated the four smaller Canuries, Laucerotx, Fuerteventura, Gomera, and Femo:$ but the natives. of the threes larger islands. of Canaria, Palma, and Teneriff, resisted above seventy yours the private adeenturers of Spain : nos waz it. till the: close ‘of the fifteenth century thet they finally yielded (1498):.t0: the fleets.and armies, the artillery and the mjasionarion of Ferdinand aud Isabella.|} Their weapens were
segs
+ Abulfed. Geograph, Tabula, v..p 290. Vern. Reisk.
+ Vie de: Pétrarque, tam. i. p, 199-205. I have disdained a silly and sroundieae story that the English: ambassadors at Avignon were. alarmed bythe greut of the Fertanate #lands, a title whieh, according to their prejudice, could belong gaily to. théee 66 Britain,
+ Petrarch de. Vita Solitan4, L ii. sect. vi. c, 3..p. 277, Edit. Basil, The Abbate Tira-
boschi (Istoria della Letterstura Italiesa, tom. ivi. pi 131.) inejntaing this-mateval disco |.
very against the national jealousy of a Spsnish critic.
§ Ses a swall but valuable: treaties of Pierre: Besgerow de Ja Neviguthon At. : €. 6 7—29—85) which introduces the Voyages principalement en Avia, Set. he Haye, son 2 vols. in.4te.
À The History and Description of the Canary luted) hy George Gloss: (London, 1704), are drawn partly from a Spanish: MS composed at Palma, and partly from the
reading
ON THE POSITION OF THE MERIDIOWAL LINE, &c. . 485
unequal, but they used the advantage of the ground ; their generosity could spare a suppliant enemy, and they reserved for their own defeat the precipice of despair. The remains of the old inhabitants are now incerpotated with the conquerors: the population of the Canaries may atiount to near two hundred thousand souls who enjoy, under the © yoke of civil and ecelesiastical tyranny, the blessings of peace and the arts of commerce, which were unknown te the savage Hberty-of their predecessors.
‘+ In the time of our grandfathers (it was said in the reign of Claws dius) a certat Euwdoxus, fying from the wrath of Ptolemy Lathyras, King of Egypt, embarked on the Red Sea, and suiled round to Cadiz in Spun.” This passage is extracted by Pomponits Mela*. from the writitgs of Cornékus Nepos, who lived in the time of the said Ptolenty, and deserved the friends of Cieero and Attieus.? A witness of a respectable character who affirms a recent and notorious fact, will na. turally engage the public confidence : this Afican circumnavigation has - been enanimoudly admitted, and I must conceal my swspiciont could I not prodtice from the phildsopher Posidoniue, a writer of equal age and euthority, the true and accurate state of the veyages of Eudoxus. ¢ His eye might be deceived by the uanataral distortions and: monétrous dresses of the sowthern savages, he might find some tribes ignorent of the use-ef language and five: but that he returned by # new road te the nerthern hemisphere,
Iynotam per iter, gelidhs enavit ad Arctos, I positively deriÿ. ' Under the reign of the second Euergetes, who died one hundred and
peading and expérience of the duthor. But he hed not, ner have I, seen the copious work of a native of the Canaries (Josephi de Viera y Clavijo Noticias de la Historia General de les Isles de Cunaria. Madrid, 1762, &c. 4 vols. in 4to.). Clavijo is the unforfunate man whio His beën dishonoured, perhaps anjustly, by the wit and malice of * Mets de Sith Orbis, IN if, €. 9. p.402, 408, 408; Edin. Vous, The same pasenge of Cornelius Nepos is quoted by Pliny. (Hist. Natur. lib. ii. c. 67.) + See Acloe Gellius, Noctus Attiest, lib. wv: co. 28 We have some fragiments ofthe Leteers- of Cicero-te Comelius Nepos, who has cemposed a life of Atticus which is still à Posidonius, apud Strabon. Geograph I. ii. p. 130108 | | | seventeen
436 ON THE POSITION OF THE MERIDIONAL LINE, &c.
seventeen years before the Christian era, Eudoxüs:of Cyzicus, a-priest, a linguist, and a.mariner, arrived in Egypt and gained the. favour of. ‘the prince and people. A new field of riches and knowledge was ‘opened to the Ptolemies ‘by the shipwreck of an Indian on the Red Sea. With this guide,:who had soon learned the Egyptian tongue, Eudoxus sailed to India on his first voyage of discovery, but the cargo of spices-and precious stones with which he returned exposed him to the avarice of the tyrant. After his death, under the regency .of his widow Cleopatra, Eudoxus was again employed. In his second voyage he was driven on the coast of Æthiopia ; among the hospitable natives he distributed the unknown blessings of corn, wine, and dry figs, while his own. curiosity. was gratified with a catalogue of their. barharoug words; and the prow of a foreign ship, iascribed with horses, which had been cast on their shore by the western winds.* - In the port of Alexandria‘ this fragment was recognized by the merchants of Cadiz, who even named the ship, a fishing vessel, which some yearg before was supposed to be lost beyond the river Lixus, on the western coast of Africa. . Eudoxus now held the thread of discovery,-but fear: or indignation urged him to leave the unworthy court of Ptolemy Lathyrus, the son of Cleopatra. I slightly mention bis return home, the sale ‘of his estate, his visit to Italy and Marseilles, and his final departure ' from Cadiz with a great ship and two brigantines to explore the. Atlantic ocean. Fired with the hope of reaching India, he supported, the murmurs of his crew, and the loss of his vessels, built a small galley of fifty oars, and continued his route till he heard on the western, the same language which he had found on the eastern, side of the. continent of Africa. -On his return to the river Lixus he offered himself and his discoveries to the Moorish king, but the timid Bogud was apprehensive of opening his dominions to unknown enemies, and had not Eudoxus escaped to the Roman province of Spain, the dangerous secret might have been extinguished with his life. His second voyage from Cadiz was prepared with more prudence and skill: the form of
* According to Pliny a similar wreck was found by Caius Cesar, the grandson of Augustus, in the Red Sea, Such stories could not have been.entertained had the. ancients formed any just idea of the size of Africa; of the Cape which advances near thirty-five degrees into the southern hemisphere. :
his
ON THE ‘POSITION OF THE MERIDIONAL LINE, &c. 487
his :vessels was’ adapted to the seas and shores ; and instead of an use- : less:train of singing-girls and physicians, he enlisted a laborious com-' pany of .husbamdmen and artificers, resolving to winter on a verdant. island which he had discovered in the ocean. It is here, at this critical: moment, that Posidonius disappoints our curiosity, referring his readers to the Spaniards of Cadiz, as the most likely to be informed of the’ failure or success of the voyage of Eudoxus, against the reality of which ‘the ‘geographer Strabo has. raised some idle and envious: objections. . . | oo
Of the four circumnavigations of Africa, three have been disproved, and the overthrow of Sataspes, Hanno; and Eudoxus, must disturb the: easy and.early triumph of the Phoenicians of Nechus. Nor are these: doubtful or.fabulous expeditions attested by the consent of ages. ° The: spirit and perhaps the records of ‘naval enterprise were lost in ‘the: destruction of Tyre and Carthage; and their conquerors were un-. willing to believe even the real achievements, which they were unable: to imitate. The world of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabians was circumscribed within a narrow outlme. Some geographers, acci-: dentally stumbling on ‘the truth, affirm or rather suspect that Africa, except:in the isthmus of Suez, is encompassed by an open and naviga-" ble sea. But a large majority, in weight as well as in number, represent. the .climates beyond ‘the ‘equator as unknown or ‘impervious; a° torrid zone .in. which no mortals can breathe, a shallow and muddy’ ocean, in which: no vessels can move, or an interposing tract of land, which joins in a-southern latitude the continents of ZEthidpia and” India. :By all who raised:such insuperable barriers, the possibility of a circumnavigation was denied; but-the few who admitted that it was: possible might doubt or disbelieve that it had ever been actually: performed. |
. Arrian,* or the nameless author who under the reign of Adrian has composed a description of the Red Sea, embraces, according to the style of antiquity, the Persian and Arabian Gulphs with a part of the’ ocean between India and Africa. “He runs the African coast to the city and promontory of Rhapta, which is placed by Ptolemy in the
* Arrian, Periplus Maris Erythræi, p. 150. Edit. Blancard. eighth
488 ON’ THE POSITION OF THE MERIDMOWAL Lins, &c.
eighth degree of southern latitude. From thence, continues Arrian, the land turns to the west, aad the surrounding oceah, WHICH HAs NEVER BEEN EXPLORED, at length mingles with the waters of the Atlantic. Under a Roman emperor the task of discovery might have been shortened, if his subjects had sailed in friendly correspondence from his ports of Egypt and Spain. But Adrian was not ambitious of con. quest, his curiosity did not grasp the knowledge of the globe ; and the endless promontory of the south would have soon exhausted the skill and patience of his mariners.
Above the crowd of vulgar geographers, Eratosthenes and Ptolemy exalt their heads, as the great masters of celestial and terrestrial scieriee, Eratosthenes* was the first who dared to measure and delineate the earth: but in his erroneous system, a burning and desolate zone extends twelve degrees on either side of the equinoctial line, The land of cinnamon, on the eastern coast of Africa, is situate within the twelfth degree: it might be superfluous to add that none had ever penetrated beyond this term of our habitable world ; but the sentence is of damning weight, from an universal scholar to whom Herodotus was familiar, and who commanded the treasures of the Alexandrian library.t The geographical sphere of Ptolemy} was enlarged by the Roman discoveries, and his own propensity to magnify space and dis. tance beyond their real proportions. His promontory of Prasum, a Cape Verd on the eastern coast of Africa, is forced as Jew as the fifteenth degree of southern latitude: but he draws, from the neigh. bourhood of this cape, the line of an unknown continent, which is . finally united with the country of the Asiatic Sine. Ptolemy reigned near fourteen centuries on earth, as well as in heaven; nor was the Greek oracle ever confuted by the experience of the Arabians.
* Eratosthenes Geogrephicorum Fragments, hb. ii. p. 63, &e. Lit, p. 199. Gotting.
+ It is generally agreed ameng scholars that Eratesthenes was styled fyra, not from being the second in eyery science, but as the second keeper (239—194 years before Christ) of the Alexandrian library. Fabricius, Bibliot. Greec. tom. ii, p. 471.
+ Claud, Ptolemeus, L iv, c. 9, L vii. e. 4, in Bertii Theatrum Geographiss Vetens, tom. i. p. 181312.
In
ON THE POSITION OF THR MERIDIONAL LINE, &c. . 489
In the sublime fiction of Camoens,* the spirit of the Cape, arising from.his stormy waves, at ence accuses and applauds the Portuguese, the first of men who had explored | their. way round the southern ' promontory of Africa.
Nor Roman prow, nor daring T'yrian oar, .
E’er dashed the white wave foaming to my shore > : Nor Greece, nor Carthage, ever spread the sail
‘ + - + : On these my seas to catch the trading gale, You, you alone, have dared to plough my main, And with the human voice disturb my lonesome reign.
I wiILL TAKE THE Guost’s worD FoR A THOUSAND Pounns!
Nechus, King or Pharaoh of Egypt, who reigned six hundred years before the Christian era, 18 mentioned i in the Hebrew Chronicles,t as well as by the father of Grecian history.t The mind of Nechus was susceptible of every kind of ambition: the Jews and Syrians fell before his arms; he entered Jerusalem in triumph ; his empire was bounded by the Euphrates ; and the ships of war which he built commanded the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The execution of his canal from the Nile to the last mentioned sea might have. changed the commerce of the world, but after expending the lives of an hundred and twenty thousand of his subjects, the King of Egypt was alarmed by an oracle, and turned his thoughts to the fame and advantage of naval discoveries. At his command, and in his vessels, a chosen band of Pheenicians penetrated from the Arabian gulf into the southern ocean, returned in the third year by the Straits of Gibraltar, and proved for
#* Mickle’s Lusiad, p.211, 212. An | Englishman must praise the versification ; the Portuguese ackuowledge the fidelity of this elegant translation.
+ These Chronicles, the reign of Pharaoh-Necho, and the contemportry history of the east, are illustrated in the learned writings of the Christian chronojogists, in the Animadvervons of Scaliger, in the Annals of Archbishop Usher, in Prideanx’s Connections, in Sir Jobn Marsham’s Canon Chronicus, in an Essai sur l’Histoire Orientale, in the Monde Primitif of M. Court de Gebelin. By these, and by many more, the Pheenician voyage ‘round Africa is reported without a shadow of suspicion.
+ Herodot. 1. ii. c, 188, 159, p. 181, 182, 1. iv, c. 42, p. 298. In every quotation of Herodotus I use the Greek edition of Wesseling, with his learned notes, and those of M. Larcher, the French translator, a scholar and e érñic,
VOL, II. SR the
