.

"Libya," he says, "is known to be washed on all sides by the sea, except
where it is attached to Asia. This discovery was first made by Neco,
the Egyptian king, who sent a number of ships manned by Phoenicians
with orders to make for the Pillars of Hercules (now known as the
Straits of Gibraltar), and return to Egypt through them and by the
Mediterranean Sea. The Phoenicians took their departure from Egypt
by way of the Erythraean Sea, and so sailed into the Southern Ocean.
When autumn came (it is supposed they left the Red Sea in August) they
went ashore, wherever that might happen to be, and, having sown a tract
of land with corn, waited until the grain was fit to cut. Having reaped
it, they set sail, and thus it came to pass that two whole years went
by, and it was not till the third year that they doubled the Pillars
of Hercules and made good their voyage home. On their return they
declared (I, for my part, says Herodotus, do not believe them, but
perhaps others may) that in sailing round Libya they had the sun upon
their right hand. In this way was the extent of Libya first discovered."

[Illustration: THE PILLARS OF HERCULES, AS SHOWN IN A MEDIAEVAL MAP.
Higden's Map of the World, 1360 A.D.]

To modern students, who have learnt more of Phoenician enterprise,
the story does not seem so incredible as it did to Herodotus; and a
modern poet, Edwin Arnold, has dreamed into verse a delightful account
of what this voyage may have been like.

Ithobal of Tyre, Chief Captain of the seas, standing before Neco,
Pharaoh and King, Ruler of Nile and its lands, relates the story of
his two years' voyage, of the strange things he saw, of the hardships
he endured, of the triumphant end. He tells how, with the help of
mechanics from Tarshish, Tyre, and Sidon, he built three goodly ships,
"Ocean's children," in a "windless creek" on the Red Sea, how he loaded
them with cloth and beads, "the wares wild people love," food-flour
for the ship, cakes, honey, oil, pulse, meal, dried fish and rice,
and salted goods. Then the start was made down the Red Sea, until at
last "the great ocean opened" east and south to the unknown world and
into the great nameless sea, by the coast of that "Large Land whence
none hath come" they sailed.

Ithobal had undertaken no light task; contrary winds, mutiny on board,
want of fresh water, all the hardships that confront the mariner who
pilots his crews in search of the unknown. Strange tribes met th