Yet Some Of The Ancients
Have Left Hints That Such Western Lands Existed.
In the close of the
second act of his tragedy of Medea, Seneca says, "The time will come, when
The ocean shall become navigable, and a vast land or New World shall be
discovered." St Gregory, in his exposition of the Epistle of St Clement,
says, "There is a new world, or even worlds, beyond the ocean." We are
informed by other authors, that a Carthaginian merchant ship accidentally
discovered in the ocean, many days sail from our ancient continent, an
incredibly fruitful island, full of navigable rivers, having plenty of
wild beasts, but uninhabited by men, and that the discoverers were
desirous of settling there; but, having given an account of this discovery
to the senate of Carthage, they not only absolutely prohibited any one to
sail thither, but put all who had been there to death, the more
effectually to prevent any others from making the attempt. Yet all this is
nothing to the purpose, as there is no authentic memorial of this supposed
voyage, and those who have spoken of it incidentally have given no
cosmographical indications of its situation, by means of which the admiral
Christopher Columbus, who made the first discovery of the West Indies,
could have acquired any information to guide him in that great discovery.
Besides, that there were no wild beasts, either in the windward or leeward
islands which he discovered, those men who would rob Columbus, in part at
least, of the honour of his great discovery, misapply the following
quotation from the Timaeus of Plato:
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