balmy spirit of the western gale
Eternal breathes on fruits untaught to fail:
Each dropping pear a following pear supplies,
On apples apples, figs on figs arise:
The same mild season gives the blooms to blow,
The buds to harden, and the fruits to grow;
Here order'd vines in equal ranks appear,
With all th' united labours of the year;
Some to unload the fertile branches run,
Some dry the black'ning clusters in the sun,
Others to tread the liquid harvest join,
The groaning presses foam with floods of wine.
Here are the vines in early flow'r descry'd,
Here grapes discolour'd on the sunny side,
And there in autumn's richest purple dy'd.
Beds of all various herbs, for ever green,
In beauteous order terminate the scene.

_Odyssey,_ b. vii. v. 142.

This description perfectly applies to the luxuriant and uninterrupted
vegetation of tropical climates.

From the time of Homer to that of Herodotus, the Greeks spread themselves
over several parts of the countries lying on the Mediterranean sea. About
600 years before Christ, a colony of Phocean Greeks from Ionia, founded
Massilia, the present Marseilles; and between the years 500 and 430, the
Greeks had established themselves in Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and even in
some of the southern provinces of Spain. They were invited or compelled to
these emigrations by the prospect of commercial advantages, or by intestine
wars; and they were enabled to accomplish their object by the geographical
and nautical charts, which they are said to have obtained from the
Phoenicians, and by means of the sphere constructed by Anaximander the
Milesian. The eastern parts of the Mediterranean, however, seem still to
have been unexplored. Homer tells us that none but pirates ventured at the
risk of their lives to steer directly from Crete to Lybia; and when the
Ionian deputies arrived at Egina, where the naval forces of Greece were
assembled, with an earnest request that the fleet might sail to Ionia, to
deliver their country from the dominion of Xerxes, who was at that time
attempting to subdue Greece, the request was refused, because the Greeks
were ignorant of the course from Delos to Ionia, and because they believed
it to be as far from Egina to Samos, as from Egina to the Pillars of
Hercules.

[1] Dr. Vincent, in the 2nd vol. of his Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, has
a very elaborate commentary on this chapter of Ezekiel, in which he
satisf