After the Phœnician time every endeavour to navigate this coast failed, and amongst the adventurers, one Eudoxus seems to have been a man of extraordinary resources, energy, and perseverance. For nearly two thousand years, the coast south of the Straits of Gibraltar remained unvisited by the traders of the seas, who were constantly entering in at, and issuing from, these straits, and thence pursuing voyages for thousands of miles within and without. The passage--if I may so call it--along the coast, was re-opened only after the compass had been re-discovered, and then only after long and persevering efforts; but as soon as the westernmost cape was doubled, all the world lay open, and there was no further difficulty in reaching India on the East, and the new continent on the West, the discovery of which was in reality effected as a consequence. The opinion which I had formed on the spot respecting the navigation of the coast, is entirely confirmed by all naval authorities. I never met an officer, knowing the coast, who, on the question being put to him, did not answer of Africa, “without the compass it is impossible to navigate the coast.” The statements of Herodotus, the Periplus of Hanno, the sea traffick of the Carthaginians on the Gold Coast, present no difficulty, if you admit the stone of Hercules, the cup of Apollo, the arrow of Abaris, and the Batylia to have any meaning; and you must reject several of the most authoritative statements of history if you will not. I must apologise for the space I have devoted to this antiquarian subject. The matter is so incidental to the spot, and interwoven with the patron of these volumes, that, however at variance my conclusions may be with the host of the Olympus of history, I could not omit them. Whatever be the verdict of the reader on other parts of the case, it can only be favourable as to the objections which our highest authorities have raised. I have proved its case to be compatible with secresy;--and if it was secret it could be lost. I have shown in the method first practised by the Arabs, the instrument to which the otherwise meaningless myths of Greece refer. I have identified the stone of Hercules, the cup of Apollo, the arrow of Abaris, the Batylia of Sanchoniathon, the Abadir of the Temple of Hierapolis. That the “Stone of Hercules” was the magnet no one contests. I have shown from extrinsic evidence, that our instrument is not Chinese, and that it was associated with ancient augury; and I have found a people stretching through that chasm of years,--from pagan Rome to Christian science,--a people of Phœnicians, who, away from Europe, preserved the faith and industry of their sunk metropolis, and could transmit the magnet from Hercules to Flavio de Gioja.