112 EXPEDITIONS BEFORE ALEXANDER. [CHAP.
occupied the imagination of Christopher Columbus, and which
Oviedo calls the sea-weed meadows (Pmderias de yerva\ A host
of small marine animals inhabits these gently moved and ever-
green masses of Fucus natans^ one of the most generally dis-
tributed of the social plants of the sea1." It is this prodigious
mass of tangle which is described in the poem—for nothing else
can be meant—when we are told, that in the midst of the currents
an abundance of sea-weed is found, which checks the vessel's
course as if it were-brushwood; that there was no depth of water,
and as the ships crept through it with difficulty, they were sur-
rounded by sea-monsters11. "These things Himilco the Cartha-
ginian stated that he saw with his own eyes, and had experience
of on the surface of the ocean8."
A similar account of this phenomenon—which, if it is not
derived, as it well may be, from Himilco, at least confirms his
statements—is given in the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise On
Wonders. It runs thus:—"They say that the Phoenicians of
Gades, sailing before an east wind for four days from the Pillars
of Hercules, reach a desolate spot, full of tangle and sea-weed,
which floats with the ebb, and sinks with the flow of the tide, and
on it is found an immense multitude of tunnies, incredibly large
and fat4."
The enterprise which next claims our attention, the Retreat of
The Retreat tne ^en Thousancl» though the preciseness of the
of the Ten record in which it is related communicates to it in
ousan . ^e reaciing something of a matter-of-fact character,
1 Humboldt's Cosmos (Otto's Trans.), I. p. 313.
s Ora Marit*) 11, m—9:
Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites
Exstare fucum, et saepe virgulti vice
Retinere puppim: dicit hie nihilominus
Non in profundum terga demitti maris,
Parvoque aquarum vix supertexi solum;
Obire semper hue et hue ponti feras,
Kavigia lenta et languide repentia
Internatare belluas.
Compare also 11 408— x i.
8 Ora Marit., 11. 412, 413.
* DcMirabilibusAuscultationtiMs, § 136 (ed. Apelt).