eet in the Red Sea, manned it with Phoenician sailors and
sent them out upon the waters to discover the shape and dimensions of
the continent of Africa. These sailors passed down through the straits
of Bab et Mandel and clear around the Cape of Good Hope and the
continent of Africa more than two thousand years before Vasco Degama,
and coming in through the straits of Gibraltar after an absence of about
two years. Their food supply run low, their supply was mainly wheat,
they tied up their ships, landed, plowed the ground with sharpened
sticks, cast their bread, not upon the waters, but upon the ground, and
thus raised a new crop of wheat, preparing to supply their wants until
they should return to Egypt, that eternal land of plenty.

It will be remembered that for centuries previous to the close of the
Punic wars under Hannibal the Phoenician people owned and controlled
the whole north of Africa, west of Egypt, and the whole of Spain up to
the Ebro, and the whole of Cyprus and a very large portion of Sicily,
and that when the ancient writers, and even modern writers speak of
Spain, the Carthagenians and northern Africa, they refer to the people
who sprang from the commercial cities on the eastern shore of the
Mediterranean sea, occupying a territory of not more than one hundred
miles in extent north and south, and extending back into Syria not more
than fifteen miles, whence all these people sprang, and applied to them
the general term of Phoenicians.

From the authorities we have quoted we think there can be no doubt but
that here and there a learned man among the Greek scholars had come to
believe that some eastern navigator had discovered a western world
exceedingly productive and beautiful, and that a population of eastern
origin had sprung up and existed in the lands so discovered.

IF THE WESTERN CONTINENT HAD REALLY BEEN DISCOVERED ACCIDENTALLY, OR OF
SET PURPOSE, WHAT EASTERN NATION WOULD BE MOST LIKELY TO HAVE BEEN THE
DISCOVERERS OF THIS WESTERN WORLD.

Nineveh and Babylon are never spoken of as having sent even a keel boat
out upon the seas. Egypt has been called the "Cradle of The Arts" and
the "Birthplace of Science and Civilization," but Egypt never attained
the maritime power or skill to enable her to navigate the waters of the
Mediterranean beyond the mouths of her eternal river.

Greece, afterwards so celebrated for science, art and philosophy, was at
the day of which Homer sung, a mere associatio