But Finding This Journey Attended With
Many Inconveniencies, The Course Was Twice Altered In Search Of A More
Commodious Route[16].
About nine hundred years after the flood, and
previous to the destruction of Troy, Egypt was ruled by a king
Named
Sesostris, who caused a canal to be cut from the Red Sea to that arm of
the Nile which flows past the city of Heroum, that ships might pass and
repass between India and Europe, to avoid the expence and trouble of
carrying merchandize by land across the isthmus of Suez; and Sesostris
had large caraks or ships built for this purpose[17]. This enterprize,
however, did not completely succeed; for, if it had, Africa would have
been converted into an island, as there are even now only twenty leagues
or sixty miles of land between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.
About this time the Grecians gathered a fleet and army, called the
Argonautic expedition, under the command of Jason and Alceus[18]. Some
say they sailed from Crete, and others from Greece; but they passed
through the Propontis and the _sleeve_ of St George into the Euxine,
where some of the vessels perished, and Jason returned back to Greece.
Alceus reported that he was driven by a tempest to the Palus Maeotis,
where he was deserted by all his company; and those who escaped had to
travel by land to the German ocean, where they procured shipping; and
sailing past the coasts of Saxony, Friesland, Holland, Flanders, France,
Spain, and Italy, returned to the Peloponnesus and Greece, after
discovering a great portion of the coast of Europe.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 41 of 812
Words from 11329 to 11599
of 224388
