In early times the Atlantic ocean, like all things without known bounds, was viewed by man with mixed feelings of fear and awe. It was called the Sea of Darkness. Yet, nevertheless, there were those who professed to have some knowledge of its extent, and of what lay beyond. The earliest reference to this sea is that by Theopompus, in the fourth century before the Christian era, given in a fragment of Ælian,[2] where a vast island is described, lying far in the west, and peopled by strange races. To this we may add the reference of Plato[3] to the island called Atlantis, which lay west of the Pillars of Hercules, and which was estimated to be larger than Asia and Africa combined. Aristotle[4] also thought that many other lands existed beyond the Atlantic. Plato supposed that the Atlantis was sunk by an earthquake, and Crantor says that he found the same account related by the Priests of Sais three hundred years after the time of Solon, from whom the grandfather of Critias had his information. Plato says, that after the Atlantis disappeared navigation was rendered too difficult to be attempted by the slime which resulted from the sinking of the land. It is probable that he had in mind the immense fields of drifting sea-weed found in that locality, and which Humboldt estimates to cover a portion of the Atlantic ocean six times as large as all Germany. It is thought that Homer[5] obtained the idea of his Elysium in the Western ocean from the voyages of the Phenicians, who, as is well known, sailed regularly to the British Islands. They are also supposed by some to have pushed their discoveries as far as the Western Continent. Cadiz, situated on the shore of Andalusia, was established by the Tyrians twelve centuries before the year of Christ; and when Cadiz, the ancient Gadir, was full five hundred years old, a Greek trader, Colæus, there bought rare merchandise, a long and severe gale having driven his ships beyond the Pillars of Hercules. THE PHENICIANS. In the ninth century before the Christian Era, the Phenicians had established colonies on the western coast of Africa; and three hundred years later, according to Herodotus, Pharaoh Necho, son of Psammiticus, sent an expedition, manned by Phenician sailors, around the entire coast of Africa. Vivien de St. Martin fixes the date of this expedition at 570 before Christ. St. Martin, in his account of the voyage, improves slightly upon the views of Carl Müller, and is followed by Bougainville.[6] This voyage, performed by Hanno under the direction of Pharaoh, was inscribed in the Punic language in a Carthagenian temple, being afterwards translated into Greek, and was thus preserved.