Читать книгу The Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen - B. F. DeCosta - Страница 8

In the ninth century before the Christian Era, the Phenicians had established colonies on the western coast of Africa; and three hundred years later, according to Herodotus, Pharaoh Necho, son of Psammiticus, sent an expedition, manned by Phenician sailors, around the entire coast of Africa. Vivien de St. Martin fixes the date of this expedition at 570 before Christ. St. Martin, in his account of the voyage, improves slightly upon the views of Carl Müller, and is followed by Bougainville.[6] This voyage, performed by Hanno under the direction of Pharaoh, was inscribed in the Punic language in a Carthagenian temple, being afterwards translated into Greek, and was thus preserved.

That the Canary Islands were discovered and colonized by the Phenicians, there need be no doubt. Tradition had always located islands in that vicinity. Strabo speaks of the Islands of the Blessed, as lying not far from Mauritania, opposite Gadir or Cadiz. And he distinctly says, "That those who pointed out these things were the Phenicians, who, before the time of Homer, had possession of the best part of Africa and Spain."[7] And when we remember that the Phenicians sought to monopolize trade, and hold the knowledge of their commercial resorts a secret, it is not surprising that we should hear nothing more of the Fortunate Isles until about eighty-two years before Christ, when the Roman Sertorius met some Lusitanian sailors on the coast of Spain who had just returned from the Fortunate Isles. They are described as two delightful islands, separated by a narrow strait, distant from Africa five hundred leagues. Twenty years after the death of Sertorius, Statius Sebosus drew up a chart of a group of five islands, each mentioned by name, and which Pliny calls the Hesperides, including the Fortunate Isles. This mention of the Canaries was sixty-three years before Christ.