“The Phœnicians ventured at a very early period in the world’s history to penetrate beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. They founded Gades and Tartessus on the Spanish, and Lixus, together with many other cities on the Mauritanian coasts of the Atlantic Ocean. They sailed northward along these shores to the Cassiterides, from whence they obtained tin, and to the Prussian coasts where they procured amber found there; whilst southward they penetrated as far as Madeira and the Cape de Verd Islands. Amongst other regions they visited the Archipelago of the Canary Isles, where their attention was arrested by the Peak of Teneriffe, whose great height appears to be even more considerable than it actually is from the circumstance of the mountain projecting directly from the sea. Through their colonies established in Greece, especially under Cadmus in Bœotia, the Greeks were made acquainted with the existence of this mountain which soared high above the region of clouds, and with the ‘Fortunate Islands’ on which this mountain was situated, and which were adorned with fruits of all kinds, and particularly with the golden orange. By the transmission of this tradition through the songs of the bards, Homer became acquainted with these remote regions, and he speaks of an Atlas to whom all the depths of ocean are known, and who bears upon his shoulders the great columns which separate from one another the heavens and the earth,[EL] and of the _Elysian Plains_, described as a wondrously beautiful land in the west.”[EM] Hesiod expresses himself in a similar manner regarding Atlas, whom he represents as the neighbour of the Hesperides.[EN] The Elysian Plains, which he places at the western limits of the earth, he terms the ‘Islands of the Blessed.’[EO] Later poets have still further embellished these myths of Atlas, the Hesperides, their golden apples, and the Islands of the Blessed, which are destined to be the abode of good men after death, and have connected them with the expeditions of the Tyrian God of Commerce, Melicertes, the Hercules of the Greeks.