d with it:--Necho lived about six
hundred and sixteen years before Christ; consequently little more than two
hundred years before Herodotus; moreover, the communication and commerce of
the Greeks with Egypt, was begun in the time of Psammeticus, the immediate
predecessor of Necho, and was encouraged in a very particular manner by
Amasis (who died in 525), who married a Greek, and was visited by Solon.
From these circumstances, it is improbable that Herodotus, who was
evidently not disposed to believe the account of the appearance of the sun,
should not have had it in his power to obtain good evidence, whether a ship
that had sailed from the Red Sea, had returned by the Mediterranean: if
such evidence were acquired, it is obvious, as has been already remarked,
that the third source of fabrication is utterly destroyed. Dr. Vincent is
strongly opposed to the authenticity of this voyage, chiefly on the grounds
that such ships as the ancients had, were by no means sufficiently strong,
nor their seamen sufficiently skilful and experienced, to have successfully
encountered a navigation, which the Portuguese did not accomplish without
great danger and difficulty, and that the alleged circumnavigation produced
no consequences.

It may be incidentally remarked that the incredulity of Herodotus with
regard to the appearance of the sun to the north of the zenith, is not
easily reconcileable with what we shall afterwards shew was the extent of
his knowledge of the interior of Egypt. He certainly had visited, or had
received communications from those who had visited Ethiopia as far south as
eleven degrees north latitude. Under this parallel the sun appears for a
considerable part of the year to the north. How, then, it may be asked,
could Herodotus be incredulous of this phenomenon having been observed by
the Phoenician circumnavigators. This difficulty can be solved by supposing
either that if he himself had visited this part of Africa, it was at a
season of the year when the sun was in that quarter of the heavens in which
he was accustomed to see it; or, if he received his information from the
inhabitants of this district, that they, not regarding the periodical
appearance of the sun to the north of the zenith as extraordinary, did not
think it necessary to mention it. It certainly cannot be supposed that if
Herodotus had either seen himself, or heard from others, that the sun in
Ethiopia sometimes appeared to the north of the zenith