The Batylia would be placed only on board the vessels destined for Lybia, Southern Africa, Spain, or Britain; and they would not be shipped like a bale of goods, or invoiced like a case of instruments. But whatever ceremonies were employed in Tyre, the Straits themselves must have been the scene of the initiation connected with their use. We may assume, with perfect confidence, that, in passing the Straits, every means were taken that craft could devise or superstition enforce, to preserve secret _all the means_ through which this exterior commerce was carried on; whether the knowledge of the currents, the winds, the tides, the seas, the shores, the people, or the harbours. The traffic of the Phœnicians and Carthaginians was a mystery, and that mystery lay beyond the Straits. The Phœnician vessel running herself on the rocks that the Roman might not find the passage, tells the whole story; and this secrecy was enforced by the most sanguinary code: death was the penalty of indiscretion. We know from the Greek writers that particular ceremonies were performed in passing the Straits. They approached the Groves of Hercules with votive offerings, and departed in haste, oppressed by the sanctity of the spot. _Hercules_ is the name associated with these mysteries, which seem to possess all the character of initiation, although there is no Dimeter, Dionysius, or Astarte. Sailors are a primitive people: like children, they retain usages and traditions long forgotten by the other classes of a community. This spot is above all others on earth, fitted to imbibe such a superstition, and to retain such a ceremony. The races have remained undisturbed: I therefore hoped to find, even still, some remnants, and diligently made inquiries amongst Spaniards and Moors, but was not rewarded by any discovery.[187] But in one of the accounts of the Missionary expeditions to Morocco, for the redemption of slaves, I fell upon a description of the ceremony, as practised here down to the close of the seventeenth century. The vessel was proceeding from Ceuta to Cadiz: the ceremony was not performed on crossing between Europe and Africa, but on passing through the Straits and passing outwards.[188] It is a pantomime, of which that performed by our sailors in crossing the line might be given as a description: it is in fact the copy, the old Phœnician initiation, preserved down to the time when navigation took her new spring; and at the very spot, and amongst the mariners who first reached and passed the Equator, was by them transferred to the ideal line of the Equator, mingling in strange and inexplicable incongruity ancient mythology with modern science; and then changing Hercules, who had nothing to do with the sea, for Neptune. The duckings with water mean the ablution; the shaving and fining recall the oaths and penalty; the white wig, the veil of the priests of Hercules; and the cooking utensils are paraded in memory of the victim[189] and altar.