In the ninth century before the Christian Era, the Phenicians had
established colonies on the western coast of Africa; and three hundred
years later, according to Herodotus, Pharaoh Necho, son of Psammiticus,
sent an expedition, manned by Phenician sailors, around the entire coast
of Africa. Vivien de St. Martin fixes the date of this expedition at 570
before Christ. St. Martin, in his account of the voyage, improves
slightly upon the views of Carl Müller, and is followed by
Bougainville.[6] This voyage, performed by Hanno under the direction of
Pharaoh, was inscribed in the Punic language in a Carthagenian temple,
being afterwards translated into Greek, and was thus preserved.
That the Canary Islands were discovered and colonized by the Phenicians,
there need be no doubt. Tradition had always located islands in that
vicinity. Strabo speaks of the Islands of the Blessed, as lying not far
from Mauritania, opposite Gadir or Cadiz. And he distinctly says, "That
those who pointed out these things were _the Phenicians_, who, before
the time of Homer, had possession of the best part of Africa and
Spain."[7] And when we remember that the Phenicians sought to monopolize
trade, and hold the knowledge of their commercial resorts a secret, it
is not surprising that we should hear nothing more of the Fortunate
Isles until about eighty-two years before Christ, when the Roman
Sertorius met some Lusitanian sailors on the coast of Spain who had just
returned from the Fortunate Isles. They are described as two delightful
islands, separated by a narrow strait, distant from Africa five hundred
leagues. Twenty years after the death of Sertorius, Statius Sebosus drew
up a chart of a group of five islands, each mentioned by name, and which
Pliny calls the Hesperides, including the Fortunate Isles. This mention
of the Canaries was sixty-three years before Christ.