The distance of Madeira from the coast of
Africa is about 400 miles or about 4000 stadia. The climate of Madeira
is very temperate: the thermometer seldom sinks below 60 deg., though it
sometimes rises as high as 90 deg. of Fahrenheit. On the high and
mountainous parts there are heavy dews, and rain falls at all seasons.
Owing to the variety of surface and elevation the island produces both
tropical products and those of temperate countries. The fame of this
happy region had spread to all parts of the ancient world, though we
cannot safely conclude that the islands were known by report to Homer.
Horace in his 16th _Epode_ is probably alluding to these islands when
he is speaking of the Civil Wars and of flying from their horrors in
those beautiful lines:

Nos manet Oceanus circumvagus; arva beata
Petamus arva divites et insulas, &c.

]

[Footnote 125: The passage is in the fourth book of the 'Odyssey,' v.
563, and is quoted by Strabo (p. 31):

And there in sooth man's life is easiest;
Nor snow, nor raging storm, nor rain is there,
But ever gently breathing gales of zephyr
Oceanus sends up.

Strabo in another passage expresses an opinion that the Elysian fields
were in the southern parts of Spain. That would at least be a good
place for them.]

[Footnote 126: This region is the Mauritania of the Roman Geographers,
the modern Marocco, and the town of Tigennis is the Roman Tingis, the
modern Tangier, which is on the Atlantic coast of Africa,
south-south-east of Gades. The circumstance of Tingis being attacked
shows that the African campaign of Sertorius was in the north-western
part of Marocco. Strabo mentions Tinga (p. 825). See also Plin. _H.N._
v. 1.]

[Footnote 127: The story of this giant is in the mythographers. Tumuli
are found in many parts of the old and new world, and it seems
probable that they were all memorials to the dead. The only surprising
thing in this story is the size of the body; which each man may
explain in his own way. There are various records in antient writers
of enormous bones being found. Those found at Tegea under a smithy,
which were supposed to be the bones of Orestes, were seven cubits long
(Herodotus, i. 68), little more than the ninth part of the dimensions
of Antaeus: but Antaeus was a giant and Orestes was not. See Strabo's
remarks on this story (p. 829).]

[Footnote 128: See Life of Sulla, c. 17. I am not sure that I have
given the right meaning