It may be incidentally remarked that the incredulity of Herodotus with regard to the appearance of the sun to the north of the zenith, is not easily reconcileable with what we shall afterwards shew was the extent of his knowledge of the interior of Egypt.  He certainly had visited, or had received communications from those who had visited Ethiopia as far south as eleven degrees north latitude.  Under this parallel the sun appears for a considerable part of the year to the north.  How, then, it may be asked, could Herodotus be incredulous of this phenomenon having been observed by the Phoenician circumnavigators.  This difficulty can be solved by supposing either that if he himself had visited this part of Africa, it was at a season of the year when the sun was in that quarter of the heavens in which he was accustomed to see it; or, if he received his information from the inhabitants of this district, that they, not regarding the periodical appearance of the sun to the north of the zenith as extraordinary, did not think it necessary to mention it.  It certainly cannot be supposed that if Herodotus had either seen himself, or heard from others, that the sun in Ethiopia sometimes appeared to the north of the zenith, he would have stated in such decided terms, when narrating the circumnavigation of the Phoenicians, that such a phenomenon appeared to him altogether incredible.

Before we return to the immediate subject of this part of our work, we may be allowed to deviate from strict chronological order, for the purpose of mentioning two striking and important facts, which naturally led to the belief of the practicability of circumnavigating Africa, long before that enterprise was actually accomplished by the Portuguese.

We are informed by Strabo, on the authority of Posidonius, that Eudoxus of Cyzicus, who lived about one hundred and fifty years before Christ, was induced to conceive the practicability of circumnavigating Africa, from the following circumstance.  As Eudoxus was returning from India to the Red Sea, he was driven by adverse winds on the coast of Ethiopia:  there he saw the figure of a horse sculptured on a piece of wood, which he knew to be a part of the prow of a ship.  The natives informed him that it had belonged to a vessel, which had arrived among them from the west.  Eudoxus brought it with him to Egypt, and subjected it to the inspection of several pilots:  they pronounced it to be the prow of a small kind of vessel used by the inhabitants of Gadez, to fish on the coast of Mauritania, as far as the river Lixius:  some of the pilots recognised it as belonging to a particular vessel, which, with several others, had attempted to advance beyond the Lixius, but had never afterwards been heard of.  We are further informed on the same authority, that Eudoxus, hence conceiving it practicable to sail round Africa, made the attempt, and actually sailed from Gadez to a part of Ethiopia, the inhabitants of which spoke the same language as those among whom he had formerly been.  From some cause not assigned, he proceeded no farther:  subsequently, however, he made a second attempt, but how far he advanced, and what was the result, we are not informed.