ABSTRACT
To t.he imagination of the ancient Greek or Roman the pillars of Hercules formed the entrance into a dark and mysterious sea; yet, somewhere in its unknown waters, towards the setting of the sun, lay, in his belief, the Fortunate Islands, under a clearer sky and in a happier climate than any known in the world of men. This dream of a land, of which they spoke sometimes as an Elysium for departed spirits, sometimes almost as a region which might be reached by the living, was not altogether without an influence for good. It kept awake a longing curiosity, which might one day give birth to active enterprise; it prevented the mind from accepting the bounds of one or two inland seas as the limits of the habitable world.
