he Cyclops were stories invented by the Phoenicians to frighten
travellers of other nations away from the sea that they wished to keep
for themselves for purposes of trade.

It would take too long to tell of the great storm that destroyed the
ships and drowned the men, leaving Ulysses to make a raft on which
he drifted about for nine days, blown back to Scylla and Charybdis
and from thence to the island of Ogygia, "in the centre of the sea."
Finally he reached his home in Ithaca so changed, so aged and
weather-worn, that only his dog Argus recognised him.

This, very briefly, is Homer's world-picture of a bygone age, when
those who were seized with a thirst for travel sailed about the
Mediterranean in their primitive ships, landing on unnamed coasts,
cruising about unknown islands, meeting strange people, encountering
strange adventures.

It all reads like an old fairy tale to us to-day, for we have our maps
and charts and know the whereabouts of every country and island about
the tideless Mediterranean.

[Illustration: "THE UNROLLING OF THE CLOUDS"--I. The world as known
at the time of Homer.]

CHAPTER III

IS THE WORLD FLAT?

Still, although the men of ancient time were learning fast about the
land and sea, they were woefully ignorant. Hesiod, a Greek poet, who
lived seven hundred and fifty years before the Christian era, declared
that the world was flat, and the ocean stream or the "perfect river,"
as he called it, flowed round and round, encompassing all things.

Still, there was something beyond the water--something dim,
mysterious, unknowable. It might be the "Islands of the Blest"; it
might be the "sacred isle." One thing he asserted firmly: "Atlas
upholds the broad Heaven ... standing on earth's verge with head and
unwearied hands," while the clear-voiced Hesperides guarded their
beautiful golden apples "beyond the waters of Ocean."

"Hesperus and his daughters three
That sung about the golden tree."

But who thinks now of the weary Titan doomed for ever to support the
ancient world on his head and hands, when the atlas of to-day is brought
forth for a lesson in geography?

About this time comes a story--it may be fact or it may be fiction--that
the Phoenicians had sailed right round Africa. The voyage was arranged
by Neco, an enterprising Egyptian king, who built his ships in the
Red Sea in the year 613 B.C. The story is told by Herodotus, the Greek
traveller, many years afterwards