2. That near this island, there lay on one side the jaw of a dangerous narrow. 3. That either on the other side of it or in some other neighbouring quarter lay the open sea, and a route along it, by which the further side of the island might be reached, without traversing the narrow. 4. That at a point beyond both these openings (I say nothing for the present of the points of the compass) there lay a great stream such as he called Ὠκεανὸς, flowing always inwards to the θάλασσα, which he supposed to be fed by it (Il. xxi. 196). 5. That there was likewise a passage, which Homer called the Πλαγκταὶ, accessible from the eastern side of Greece; and through which Jason, and as he believed Jason alone, had sailed. 6. That at a point beyond this passage too, there lay an expanse of sea, θάλασσα, and again a great stream, such as he called Ὠκεανὸς, flowing always inwards to the θάλασσα. Now we have seen that he gives us in the poem one mouth, and one mouth only, of Ὠκεανὸς, which corresponds with every one of these propositions taken singly: it is, according to him, beyond Thrinacie, beyond the Straits of Scylla and Charybdis, attainable by an open sea passage, and beyond the Πλαγκταὶ or Bosphorus. It seems to follow almost mathematically, that he believed in an open sea route, which must have lain to the north, and which established a communication, independent of the Bosphorus, between the Mediterranean and the Euxine. ~_He blends two sets of reports into one._~ It also hereby appears that he had received from the Phœnicians two sets of reports, one relating to western, and the other to north-eastern navigation, but both involving a description of a great inward flowing stream as an ultimate point, agreeably to his idea of the River Ocean. These two ulterior points, obtained respectively from each set of reports, Homer, led by the similarity of features, has blended into one. We can even now take his untrue representation to pieces, and can see where and how it separates into two, each of them geographically true. In his one mouth of Ocean he has combined the conditions, that in nature belong to two separate geographical points. Both the north-eastern report and the western report he has amalgamated, by carrying the remote point of the former round, so to speak, in order to meet the latter: and having thus made his Ocean-mouth northern, as well as eastern, he consistently calls in Boreas to take the ship of Ulysses to the mouth of the Shades below, so as to fix that point in the east, because it was the counterpart to his Elysian fields which lay in the west. The two sets of Phœnician reports are in this way oddly brought to integrate one another. The Ocean mouth in the Euxine gets the benefit of the open sea route; and the Ocean mouth at Gibraltar has credit for being placed in a northern latitude and eastern longitude; each report thus throwing its own separate attributes into the common stock.