ere the ends of the earth toward the
westward in those ancient days, and our traveler accordingly, after
reaching them, returned again to the eastward. He visited Tyre, and
the cities of Phoenicia, on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean
Sea, and thence went still farther eastward to Assyria and Babylon.
It was here that he obtained the materials for what he has written in
respect to the Medes and Persians, and to the history of Cyrus. After
spending some time in these countries, he went on by land still
further to the eastward, into the heart of Asia. The country of
Scythia was considered as at "the end of the earth" in this direction.
Herodotus penetrated for some distance into the almost trackless wilds
of this remote land, until he found that he had gone as far from the
great center of light and power on the shores of the AEgean Sea as he
could expect the curiosity of his countrymen to follow him. He passed
thence round toward the north, and came down through the countries
north of the Danube into Greece, by way of the Epirus and Macedon. To
make such a journey as this was, in fact, in those days, almost to
explore the whole known world.

It ought, however, here to be stated, that many modern scholars, who
have examined, with great care, the accounts which Herodotus has
given of what he saw and heard in his wanderings, doubt very seriously
whether his journeys were really as extended as he pretends. As his
object was to read what he was intending to write at great public
assemblies in Greece, he was, of course, under every possible
inducement to make his narrative as interesting as possible, and not
to detract at all from whatever there might be extraordinary either in
the extent of his wanderings or in the wonderfulness of the objects
and scenes which he saw, or in the romantic nature of the adventures
which he met with in his protracted tour. Cicero, in lauding him as a
writer, says that he was the first who evinced the power to _adorn_ a
historical narrative. Between adorning and _embellishing_, the line is
not to be very distinctly marked; and Herodotus has often been accused
of having drawn more from his fancy than from any other source, in
respect to a large portion of what he relates and describes. Some do
not believe that he ever even entered half the countries which he
professes to have thoroughly explored, while others find, in the
minuteness of his specifications, something like conclusive proof that
h