With respect to the extent of his voyage along the western coast of Africa, some modern writers assert, without any authority, that he doubled the Cape of Good Hope:  this assertion is made in direct unqualified terms by Mickle the translator of the Lusiad.  Other writers limit the extent of his navigation to Cape Nun; while, according to other geographers, he sailed as far as Cape Three Points, on the coast of Guinea.  That there should be any doubt on the subject appears surprising; for, as Dr. Vincent very justly remarks, we have Hanno’s own authority to prove that he never was within 40 degrees of the Cape.

That the Carthaginians, before the voyage of Hanno, had discovered the Canary Islands, is rendered highly probable, from the accounts of Diodorus Siculus, and Aristotle:  the former mentions a large, beautiful, and fertile island, to which the Carthaginians, in the event of any overwhelming disorder, had determined to remove their government; and Aristotle relates that they were attracted to a beautiful island in such numbers, that the senate were obliged to forbid any further emigration to it on pain of death.

The voyages of the Carthaginians were, from the situation of their territory, and the imperfect state of geography and navigation at that period, usually confined to the Mediterranean and to the western shores of Africa and Europe; but several years antecedent to the date usually assigned to the voyages of Himilco and Hanno, a voyage of discovery is said to have been accomplished by the king of a nation little given to maritime affairs.  We allude to the voyage of Scylax, undertaken at the command of Darius the son of Hystaspes, about 550 years before Christ.  There are several circumstances respecting this voyage which deserve attention or examination; the person who performed it, is said by Herodotus, (from whom we derive all our information on the subject), to have been a native of Caryandria, or at least an inhabitant of Asia Minor:  he was therefore most probably a Greek:  he was a geographer and mathematician of some eminence, and by some writers is supposed to have first invented geographical tables.  According to Herodotus, Darius, after his Scythian expedition, in order to facilitate his design of conquest in the direction of India, resolved, in the first place, to make a discovery of that part of the world.  For this purpose he built and fitted out a fleet at Cespatyrus, a city on the Indus, towards the upper part of the navigable course of that river.  The ships, of course, first sailed to the mouth of the Indus, and during their passage the country on each side was explored.  The directions given to Scylax were, after he entered the ocean, to steer to the westward, and thus return to Persia.  Accordingly, he is said to have coasted from the mouth of the Indus to the Straits of Babelmandel, where he entered the Red Sea; and on the 30th month from his first embarking he landed at Egypt, at the same place from which Necho, king of that country, had despatched the Phoenicians to circumnavigate Africa.  From Egypt, Scylax returned to Susa, where he gave Darius a full account of his expedition.