VI.] OBSERVATIONS ON THE OCEAN. Ill
habitants of Gades used to make voyages thither—no doubt in
connexion with the tin trade1.
After visiting these northern regions it would seem that the
explorers sailed, or were driven by stress of weather,
far out into the Atlantic, for in the second passage Atiantic* Mld"
of Avienus in which Himilco is quoted2 we hear of
a wide expanse of sea in the distant West, unvisited before by any
mariner, where dead calms and dense fogs prevailed. The mention
which occurs in various Greek writers of features like these, which
could not have fallen within the experience of ordinary voyagers,
must almost certainly have been derived from the Carthaginian
narrative3. Finally, a third passage, which is the most remarkable
of all, and with which a part of the first passage must be asso-
ciated, describes that astonishing phenomenon,
which is well known to navigators of the Atlantic, s«gMso Sea.
the Sargasso Sea. The following is Humboldt's
account of it. " At the point where the Gulf Stream is deflected
from the banks of Newfoundland towards the east, it sends off
branches to the south near the Azores. This is the situation of
the Sargasso Sea, or that great bank of weeds, which so vividly
1 OraMarit., 113—19:
Tartesiisque in tenninos Oestrymnidum
Negotiandi mos erat; Carthaginis
Etiam colon! et vulgus inter Herculis
Agitans columnas haec adibant aequora,
Quae Himilco Poenus mensibus vix quattuor,
Ut ipse semet rem probasse retulit
Enavigantem, posse transmitti adserit.
»-0itf.il. 380-89:
Forro in occiduam plagam
Ab his columnis gurgitem esse interminum,
Late patere pelagus, extend! salum,
Himilco tradit: nullus haec adiit fretaj
Nullus carinas aequor illud intulit,
Desint quod alto flabra propelientia,
Nullusque puppim spiritus caeli juvet:
Dehinc quod aethram quodam amictu vestiat
Caligo, semper nebula condat gurgitem,
Et crassiore nubilum perstet die.
3 See the reff, in Berger, Geschickte far Erdkunde^ n. p. 58.