Whether the Tyrians discovered any of the Atlantic islands is unknown; the adventures and discoveries attributed to Hercules, who in this aspect is but Melkarth in Grecian raiment, points toward an early knowledge of western islands, but these myths alone are not conclusive proof. Diodorus Siculus attributes to the Phœnicians the discovery, by accident, of a large island, with navigable rivers and a delightful climate, many days’ sail westward from Africa. In the compilation _De Mirabilibus Auscultationibus_, printed with the works of Aristotle, the discovery is attributed to Carthaginians. Both versions descend from one original, now lost, and it is impossible to give a date to the event, or to identify the locality.[308] Those who find America in the island of Diodorus make improbabilities supply the lack of evidence. Stories seldom lose in the telling, and while it is not impossible that a Phœnician ship might have reached America, and even made her way back, it is not likely that the voyage would have been tamely described as of many _days’_ duration. When Carthage succeeded Tyre as mistress of the Mediterranean commerce, interest in the West revived. In the middle of the fifth century B.C., two expeditions of importance were dispatched into these waters. A large fleet under Hanno sailed to colonize, or re-colonize, the western coast of Africa, and succeeded in reaching the latitude of Sierra Leone. Himilko, voyaging in the opposite direction, spent several months in exploring the ocean and tracing the western shores of Europe. He appears to have run into the Sargasso Sea, but beyond this little is known of his adventures.[309] Ultimately the Carthaginians discovered and colonized the Canary Islands, and perhaps the Madeira and Cape Verde groups; the evidence of ethnology, the presence of Semitic inscriptions, and the occurrence in the descriptions of Pliny, Mela, and Ptolemy of some of the modern names of the separate islands, establishes this beyond a doubt for the Canaries.[310] There is no evidence that the Phœnicians or Carthaginians penetrated much beyond the coast islands, or that they reached any part of America, or even the Azores.