VI.] EXPEDITION OF SCYLAX. IOI
sun was vertical at that place at the summer solstice; and from
this it was a simple inference, that the inhabitants of the countries
further to the south would at that season have the sun to the
northward of them, and for an increasingly long period in pro-
portion as they approached the equator. This conclusion could
be verified through personal observation by anyone who advanced
along the Nile in the direction of Meroe; and the same thing
would come to the knowledge of the Phoenician sailors who
reached that part of the Red Sea which lies within the tropic
of Cancer. In consequence of this, when once the story of the
circumnavigation of Africa had come into existence, the statement
that the voyagers had the sun on their right hand during the
passage would be easily attached to it as a corollary. On the
whole we may conclude, that the execution of so Im roba
great an undertaking at that early period, though bmtyofthe
in no sense impossible, is highly improbable; and °yftge*
that, in order to accept it as a fact of history, we need stronger
evidence than is furnished by the story in Herodotus, unsupported
as it is by the authority of any other ancient writer1.
In the same part of his work in which the account of Necho's
expedition is given, the historian mentions two Ex editioil
other voyages of exploration, which were said to ofScyiaxof
have been undertaken at the command of the kings aryan a*
of Persia—that of Scylax of Caryanda in the time of Darius,
about a century later than the Egyptian expedition, and that of
Sataspes during the reign of Xerxes. The former of these, he
tells us, had for its object the investigation of the shores of Asia
from the mouth of the Indus to the head of the Red Sea. By
the order of Darius a party, among whom was Scylax, a Greek of
Caryanda, in Caria, started on shipboard from Caspatyrus, a town
on the upper course of the Indus, the exact position of which is
unknown to us, though the name—or rather that of Caspapyrus,
by which the same place is meant—occurs in Hecataeus2. They
followed the stream of the Indus "towards the east and the
rising sun" as far as the sea, after which they turned westward
1 See Bunbury, History of Anciettt Geography, vol. I. pp. 289—296, where
the question of the circumnavigation is fully and fairly discussed.
a v. supra, p. 74.