ications with the ancient "Ladders
of Incense." Necho despatched the Phoenician captains of his fleet in
search of new lands, and they started from the neighbourhood of Suez,
probably accompanied by native pilots accustomed to navigate in those
waters. The undertaking, fraught with difficulty even in the last
century, was, indeed, a formidable one for the small vessels of the
Saite period. They sailed south for months with the east to the left
of them, and on their right the continent which seemed to extend
indefinitely before them. Towards the autumn they disembarked on some
convenient shore, sowed the wheat with which they were provided, and
waited till the crop was ripe; having reaped the harvest, they again
took to the sea. Any accurate remembrance of what they saw was soon
effaced; they could merely recollect that, having reached a certain
point, they observed with astonishment that the sun appeared to have
reversed its course, and now rose on their right hand. This meant that
they had turned the southern extremity of Africa and were unconsciously
sailing northwards. In the third year they passed through the pillars
of Hercules and reached Egypt in safety. The very limited knowledge of
navigation possessed by the mariners of that day rendered this voyage
fruitless; the dangerous route thus opened up to commerce remained
unused, and its discovery was remembered only as a curious feat devoid
of any practical use.*

* The Greek writers after Herodotus denied the possibility
of such a voyage, and they thought that it could not be
decided whether Africa was entirely surrounded by water, and
that certainly no traveller had ever journeyed above 5000
stadia beyond the entrance to the Red Sea. Modern writers
are divided on the point, some denying and others
maintaining the authenticity of the account. The observation
made by the navigators of the apparent change in the course
of the sun, which Herodotus has recorded, and which neither
he nor his authorities understood, seems to me to be so
weighty an argument for its authenticity, that it is
impossible to reject the tradition until we have more
decided grounds for so doing.

In order to obtain any practical results from the arduous voyage, it
would have been necessary for Egypt to devote a considerable part of
its resources to the making of such expeditions, whereas the country
preferred to concentrate all