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.