The only incident in the History of Geographical Discovery which can be set by the side of the great achievement of Columbus, is this Necho’s circumnavigation of Africa. These two enterprises resemble each other not only in hardihood, grandeur, and success, but also in being equally instances of the happy way in which the scientific, and even the semi-scientific, imagination at times divines the truth, or the real nature of things. The truth, indeed, appears to possess not only some power of suggesting itself, but also of compelling the mind, to which it has suggested itself, to undertake the demonstration of its being the truth. It would be unfair to the Father of History to make mention of this famous undertaking in any words but his. “Libya itself,” he says, “enables us to ascertain that it is everywhere surrounded by water, except so far as it is conterminous with Asia. The Egyptian King, Necho, was the first we know of who demonstrated this. He did it in this wise: when he had abandoned the attempt to dig the Canal from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, he despatched a squadron manned by Phœnicians, with instructions to sail on till they got back into the Northern (Mediterranean) Sea, through the Pillars of Hercules; and in this way to return to Egypt. These Phœnicians, then, having set sail from the Erythrœan (Red) Sea, entered on the navigation of the Southern Sea (the Indian Ocean). When the autumn came, they would draw up their vessels on the beach, and sow what land was required, wherever they might happen to be at that point of the voyage. They would then wait for the harvest, and when they had got it in, would again set sail. In this way two years were spent; and, in the third year, having doubled the Pillars of Hercules, they returned to Egypt. They said what I cannot believe, though some, perhaps, may, that while they were sailing round Libya, they had the sun on their right hand. So was first acquired a knowledge of the contour of Libya.”