“The Greeks only began at a very late date to rival the Phœnicians and Carthaginians in navigation. They visited the coasts of the Atlantic it is true, but never appear to have penetrated far into the ocean. I doubt whether they ever saw the Canaries and the Peak of Teneriffe. They believed that Atlas, which their poets and legends described as a very high mountain placed at the western limit of the earth, must be sought on the west coast of Africa. It was placed there also by their later geographers, Strabo, Ptolemy, and others. As there is not any single mountain distinguished by its elevation in north-western Africa, the true situation of Mount Atlas has been a subject of perplexity; and it has been sought, sometimes on the coast, sometimes in the interior, sometimes near the Mediterranean, and sometimes further towards the south. It became the custom (in the first century of our era, when the Roman arms penetrated into the interior of Mauritania and Numidia,) to give the name of Atlas to the African chain of mountains which runs from west to east almost parallel with the coast of the Mediterranean. Pliny and Solinus were, however, very sensible that the descriptions of Mount Atlas given by the Greek and Roman poets were not applicable to this long mountain chain; and they therefore thought it necessary to transfer the Atlas, of which they gave a picturesque description in accordance with the poetic legends, to the terra incognita of Central Africa. According to what has been said, the Atlas of Homer and Hesiod can only be the Peak of Teneriffe; and the Atlas of the Greek and Roman geographers must be in Northern Africa.”