ascribed to its being saturated with salt,—in the second, we have shallows, large quantities of sea-weed, and wild beasts swimming about, which the Carthaginian Himilco affirmed himself to have seen:— “Plerumque porro tenue tenditur salum, Ut vix arenas subjacentes occulat; Exsuperat autem gurgitem fucus frequens Atque impeditur æstus ex uligine: Vis vel ferarum pelagus omne internatat, Mutusque terror ex feris habitat freta. Hæc olim Himilco Pœnus Oceano super _Spectasse_ semet et probasse rettulit: Hæc nos, ab imis Punicorum annalibus Prolata longo tempore, edidimus tibi.” Compare also v, 115-130 of the same poem, where the author again quotes from a voyage of Himilco, who had been four months in the ocean outside of the Pillars of Hercules:— “Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem, Sic segnis humor æquoris pigri stupet. Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites Extare fucum, et sæpe virgulti vice Retinere puppim,” etc. The dead calm, mud, and shallows of the external ocean are touched upon by Aristot. Meteorolog. ii, 1, 14, and seem to have been a favorite subject of declamation with the rhetors of the Augustan age. See Seneca, Suasoriar. i, 1. Even the companions and contemporaries of Columbus, when navigation had made such comparative progress, still retained much of these fears respecting the dangers and difficulties of the unknown ocean: “Le tableau exagéré (observes A. von Humboldt, Examen Critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie, t. iii, p. 95) que la ruse des Phéniciens avait tracé des difficultés qu’opposaient à la navigation au delà des Colonnes d’Hercule, de Cerné, et de l’Ile Sacrée (Ierné), le fucus, le limon, le manque de fond, et le calme perpétuel de la mer, ressemble d’une manière frappante aux récits animés des premiers compagnons de Colomb.” Columbus was the first man who traversed the sea of Sargasso, or area of the Atlantic ocean south of the Azores, where it is covered by an immense mass of sea-weed for a space six or seven times as large as France: the alarm of his crew at this unexpected spectacle was considerable. The sea-weed is sometimes so thickly accumulated, that it requires a considerable wind to impel the vessel through it. The remarks and comparisons of M. von Humboldt, in reference to ancient and modern navigation, are highly interesting. (Examen, _ut sup._ pp. 69, 88, 91, etc.)