We have thus, I hope, secured for Ulysses, without drawing upon the Wanderings for testimony, what seamen call a good or wide berth; room enough for the disposition of his marvels, and the mystery of the distances between them. In this northern division of the θάλασσα we may imagine Homer to have placed, without any impropriety, or any violence done to his experience of his own latitude, both the double day of the Læstrygones, and the fogs of the Cimmerians. Into it he might well drive Ulysses by the force of the south wind[583], and from it bring him back by the strength of Zephyr or of Boreas[584]. Lastly, by means of this θάλασσα, we can avoid placing Circe and the Sunrise to the west of Homer’s own country; and we are not obliged to find his representation of the Πλαγκταὶ involving him in the hopeless absurdity of contradiction to his own experimental knowledge of the general direction of Jason’s course with the ship Argo. [583] Od. xii. 325, 427. [584] Od. v. 485. x. 25. xii. 407. ~_Amalgamated reports of the Ocean-mouth._~ I now pass on to the second of the two propositions, on which it appears to me that a reasonable interpretation of the Outer Geography is to be founded. It is this: that the Poet has compounded into one two sets of Phœnician traditions respecting the Ocean-mouth, one of them originally proceeding from, or belonging to, the West, and the other to the North-east: and that he has chosen the north-eastern site as the ground on which to fix the scene of his amalgamated representation. The argument, which has recently been adduced for another purpose from the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, is available to show that the Ocean-mouth of Homer is towards the north: but it does not suffice to decide the question between North-east and North-west, nor does it decide whether Homer simply transplanted the Straits of Gibraltar, or whether he mixed together the accounts of it and of some other strait, and welded them into one. This question we must examine from the evidence concerning the Ocean-mouth supplied by the Wanderings themselves. Ulysses and his companions, when they enter the great River Ocean, enter it at a point far north, by the city and country of the Cimmerians, who are enveloped in cloud and vapour[585]: and they are carried up or against the stream (παρὰ ῥόον), by the breath of Boreas[586], to the mouth of the _Inferno_. Returning from thence, they come down the stream (κατὰ ῥόον Od. xi. 639) back to the sea (θάλασσα); and they there find themselves at the isle of Circe, where is the dwelling of Ἠὼς, and where is also the couch, from which the sun rises in the morning. [585] Od. xi. 13, 21. [586] Od. X. 507.