He determined to renounce the deceitful patronage of courts, and to start with a new expedition from Cadiz. He went thither by way of Massilia and other trading settlements, and urged all who were animated by the spirit of progress to follow him. He thus succeeded in equipping an armada, consisting of one ship and two large boats, on board of which were not only goods and provisions and the necessary crews, but artisans, scientific men, and musicians. The very ardor and extravagance of their hopes, and perhaps, too, the undue gayety in which they took their departure, unfitted them to encounter the dangers and hardships of African discovery. The crew were frightened at the swell of the open sea through which Eudoxus wished to make his way, and insisted upon following the shore, according to the usual cautious method of those days. The consequence was that the ship was stranded, and the cargo was with difficulty saved. Eudoxus prosecuted the voyage in a single ship of lighter construction, till he came to a race of people who spoke, as he thought, the same language as those he had met on the opposite side of the continent. Thinking this discovery enough for the expedition in its now enfeebled state, he returned to Spain and equipped another small fleet, better fitted to buffet the waves of the open sea. He again set forth; but the narrative, as handed down by Strabo, breaks off at this point, and we are without information upon the results of the enterprise. It is true that rumor and fable have supplied the place of authentic facts, and that Eudoxus is described by one version as having actually circumnavigated Africa; by another, as having come to a race of people who were born dumb; and by another, as having fallen in with a nation who had no mouths, but received their food through an orifice in the nose. These exaggerations are unworthy of notice; and they do not seem to have thrown discredit upon the account of the earlier experience of Eudoxus, which ranks among the most esteemed narratives of ancient maritime adventure.