EARLY MARINERS
The law of the universe is progress and expansion, and this little
old world was soon discovered to be larger than men thought.
Now in Syria--the highway between Babylonia and Egypt--dwelt a tribe
of dusky people known as Phoenicians. Some have thought that they were
related to our old friends in Somaliland, and that long years ago they
had migrated north to the seacoast of that part of Syria known as
Canaan.
Living on the seashore, washed by the tideless Mediterranean, they
soon became skilful sailors. They built ships and ventured forth on
the deep; they made their way to the islands of Cyprus and Crete and
thence to the islands of Greece, bringing back goods from other
countries to barter with their less daring neighbours. They reached
Greece itself and cruised along the northern coast of the Great Sea
to Italy, along the coast of Spain to the Rock of Gibraltar, and out
into the open Atlantic.
How their little sailing boats lived through the storms of that great
ocean none may know, for Phoenician records are lost, but we have every
reason to believe that they reached the northern coast of France and
brought back tin from the islands known to them as the Tin Islands.
In their home markets were found all manner of strange things from
foreign unknown lands, discovered by these master mariners--the
admiration of the ancient world.
[Illustration: A PHOENICIAN SHIP, ABOUT 700 B.C. From a bas-relief
at Nineveh.]
"The ships of Tarshish," said the old poet, "did sing of thee in thy
market, and thou wast replenished and made very glorious in the midst
of the seas; thy rowers have brought thee into great waters; the east
wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas."
All the world knew of the Phoenician seaports, Tyre and Sidon. They
were as famous as Memphis and Thebes on the Nile, as magnificent as
Nineveh on the Tigris and Babylon on the Euphrates. Men spoke of the
"renowned city of Tyre," whose merchants were as princes, whose
"traffickers" were among the honourable of the earth. "O thou that
art situate at the entry of the sea," cries the poet again, when the
greatness of Tyre was passing away, "which art a merchant of the people
from many isles.... Thy borders are in the midst of the seas; thy
builders have perfected thy beauty. They have made all thy ship-boards
of fir trees ... they have taken cedars of Lebanon to make masts for
thee. Of the oaks of Basan have they made thy oars.... Fine linen with
broidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be
thy sail.... The inhabitants of Sidon ... were thy mariners; thy wise
men were thy pilots."
As time goes on, early groups round the Euphrates and the Nile continue,
but new nations form and grow, new cities arise, new names appear.
Centuries of men live and die, ignorant of the great world that lies
about them--"Lords of the eastern world that knew no west."
England was yet unknown, America undreamt of, Australia still a
desolate island in an unknown sea. The burning eastern sun shone down
on to vast stretches of desert-land uninhabited by man, great rivers
flowed through dreary swamps unrealised, tempestuous waves beat
against their shores, and melancholy winds swept over the face of
endless ocean solitudes.
And still, according to their untutored minds, the world is flat, the
world is very small and it is surrounded by ever-flowing waters, beyond
which all is dark and mysterious.
Around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, revealed by the boundless
energy and daring skill of the Phoenicians, there were colonies along
the coasts of Africa and Europe, though they were not yet called by
their names. They have discovered and explored, but they have kept
their information to themselves, and they have specially refused to
divulge their voyages to the Greeks.
A story is told at a later date than this of a Phoenician shipmaster
who was bound for the Tin Islands, when he suddenly discovered that
he was being followed by a strange ship evidently bent on finding out
where these unknown islands lay. The Phoenician purposely ran his ship
on to a shoal in order to keep the secret of the discovery. When he
returned home his conduct was upheld by the State!
But though the Phoenicians have left us no record of their travels
and voyages, they had been the carriers of knowledge, and it was from
them that the Greeks learnt of "the extreme regions of the world" and
of the dim "far west." Indeed, it is highly probable that from the
Phoenicians they got material for their famous legend of the Argonauts
and their adventures in the Black Sea. Though the story is but legendary,
and it has been added to with the growing knowledge of the world, yet
it gives an idea of the perils that beset the sailors of those remote
ages and of their limitations.
And again we must remind ourselves that both the Phoenicians and early
Greeks had, like the Egyptians and Babylonians, childish ideas as to
the form of the earth. To them it was a circular plane, encircled by
the ocean, which they believed to be a broad, deep-running river
flowing round and round the world. Into this ocean stream ran all the
rivers and seas known to them. Over the earth was raised a solid
firmament of bronze in which the stars were set, and this was supported
on tall pillars "which kept the heaven and the earth asunder."
The whole delightful story of the Argonauts can be read in Kingsley's
"Heroes." It is the story of brave men who sailed in the ship _Argo_,
named after the great shipbuilder Argos, to bring back the Golden
Fleece from Colchis in the Black Sea.
Nowhere in all the history of exploration have we a more poetical
account of the launching of a ship for distant lands: "Then they have
stored her well with food and water, and pulled the ladder up on board,
and settled themselves each man to his oar and kept time to Orpheus'
harp; and away across the bay they rowed southward, while the people
lined the cliffs; and the women wept while the men shouted at the
starting of that gallant crew." They chose a captain, and the choice
fell on Jason, "because he was the wisest of them all"; and they rowed
on "over the long swell of the sea, past Olympus, past the wooded bays
of Athos and the sacred isle; and they came past Lemnos to the
Hellespont, and so on into the Propontis, which we call Marmora now."
So they came to the Bosphorus, the "land then as now of bitter blasts,
the land of cold and misery," and a great battle of the winds took
place.
[Illustration: A MAP OF THE VOYAGE OF THE ARGONAUTS. Drawn according
to the principal classical traditions. The voyage through the ocean
which, according to the ancient idea, surrounded the world will be
especially noted.]
Then the Argonauts came out into the open sea--the Black Sea. No Greek
had ever crossed it, and even the heroes, for all their courage, feared
"that dreadful sea and its rocks and shoals and fogs and bitter freezing
storms," and they trembled as they saw it "stretching out before them
without a shore, as far as the eye could see."
Wearily they sailed on past the coast of Asia; they passed Sinope and
the cities of the Amazons, the warlike women of the east, until at
last they saw the "white snow peaks hanging glittering sharp and bright
above the clouds. And they knew that they were come to Caucasus at
the end of all the earth--Caucasus, the highest of all mountains, the
father of the rivers of the East. And they rowed three days to the
eastward, while the Caucasus rose higher hour by hour, till they saw
the dark stream of Phasis rushing headlong to the sea and, shining
above the treetops, the golden roofs of the Child of the Sun."
How they reached home no man knows. Some say they sailed up the Danube
River and so came to the Adriatic, dragging their ship over the snowclad
Alps. Others say they sailed south to the Red Sea and dragged their
ship over the burning desert of North Africa. More than once they gave
themselves up for lost, "heartbroken with toil and hunger," until the
brave helmsman cried to them, "Raise up the mast and set the sail and
face what comes like men."
After days and weeks on the "wide wild western sea" they sailed by
the coast of Spain and came to Sicily, the "three-cornered island,"
and after numerous adventures they reached home once more. And they
limped ashore weary and worn, with long, ragged beards and sunburnt
cheeks and garments torn and weather-stained. No strength had they
left to haul the ship up the beach. They just crawled out and sat down
and wept, till they could weep no more. For the houses and trees were
all altered, and all the faces which they saw were strange; and their
joy was swallowed up in sorrow while they thought of their youth and
all their labour, and the gallant comrades they had lost. And the people
crowded round and asked them, "Who are you that sit weeping here?"
"We are the sons of your princes, who sailed away many a year ago.
We went to fetch the Golden Fleece and we have brought it back." Then
there was shouting and laughing and weeping, and all the kings came
to the shore, and they led the heroes away to their homes and bewailed
the valiant dead. Old and charming as is the story of the Argonauts,
it is made up of travellers' tales, probably told to the Greeks by
the Phoenicians of their adventures on unknown seas.
The wanderings of Ulysses by the old Greek poet Homer shows us that,
though they seldom ventured beyond the Mediterranean Sea, yet the
Greeks were dimly conscious of an outer world beyond the recognised
limits. They still dreamt that the earth was flat, and that the ocean
stream flowed for ever round and round it. There were no maps or charts
to guide the intrepid mariners who embarked on unknown waters.
The siege of Troy, famous in legend, was over, and the heroes were
anxious to make their way home. Ulysses was one of the heroes, and
he sailed forth from Asia Minor into the AEgean Sea. But contrary winds
drove him as far south as Cape Malea.
"Now the gatherer of the clouds," he says, in telling his story,
"aroused the North Wind against our ships with a terrible tempest,
and covered land and sea alike with clouds, and down sped night from
heaven. Thus the ships were driven headlong, and their sails were torn
to shreds by the might of the wind. So we lowered the sails into the
hold in fear of death, and rowed the ships landward apace."
Throughout all ages Cape Malea has been renowned for sudden and violent
storms, dreaded by early mariners as well as those of later times.
"Thence for nine whole days was I borne by ruinous winds over the
teeming deep; but on the tenth day we set foot on the land of the
lotus-eaters who eat a flowery food."
Now ten days' sail to the south would have brought Ulysses to the coast
of North Africa, and here we imagine the lotus-eaters dwelt. But their
stay was short. For as soon as the mariners tasted the "honey-sweet
fruit of the lotus" they forgot their homes, forgot their own land,
and only wanted to stay with the "mild-eyed melancholy lotus-eaters."
"They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then someone said: 'We will return no more';
And all at once they sang, 'Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.'"
"Therefore," said Ulysses, "I led them back to the ships, weeping and
sore against their will, and dragged them beneath the benches. Soon
they embarked and, sitting orderly, they smote the grey sea water with
their oars. Thence we sailed onward, stricken at heart. And we came
to the land of the Cyclops."
No one knows exactly where the land of the Cyclops is. Some think it
may be Sicily and the slopes of Mount Etna facing the sea.
The famous rock of Scylla and whirlpool of Charybdis, known to the
ancients as two sea-monsters, near the Straits of Messina, next
claimed his attention. Let us see how Ulysses passed them.
"We began to sail up the narrow strait," he says, lamenting. "For on
the one side lay Scylla and on the other mighty Charybdis sucking down
the salt sea water. Like a cauldron on a great fire she would seethe
up through all her troubled deeps, and overhead the spray fell on the
top of either cliff--the rock around roared horribly, and pale fear
gat hold on my men. Toward her, then, we looked, fearing destruction;
but Scylla meanwhile caught from out my hollow ships six of my company.
They cried aloud in their agony, and there she devoured them shrieking
at her gates, they stretching forth their hands to me in their death
struggles. And the most pitiful thing was this, that mine eyes have
seen of all my travail in searching out the paths of the sea."
Some have thought that the terrifying stories of Scylla, Charybdis,
and the Cyclops were stories invented by the Phoenicians to frighten
travellers of other nations away from the sea that they wished to keep
for themselves for purposes of trade.
It would take too long to tell of the great storm that destroyed the
ships and drowned the men, leaving Ulysses to make a raft on which
he drifted about for nine days, blown back to Scylla and Charybdis
and from thence to the island of Ogygia, "in the centre of the sea."
Finally he reached his home in Ithaca so changed, so aged and
weather-worn, that only his dog Argus recognised him.
This, very briefly, is Homer's world-picture of a bygone age, when
those who were seized with a thirst for travel sailed about the
Mediterranean in their primitive ships, landing on unnamed coasts,
cruising about unknown islands, meeting strange people, encountering
strange adventures.
It all reads like an old fairy tale to us to-day, for we have our maps
and charts and know the whereabouts of every country and island about
the tideless Mediterranean.
[Illustration: "THE UNROLLING OF THE CLOUDS"--I. The world as known
at the time of Homer.]