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OBSTRUCTION TO NAVIGATION 27 REPORTS OF OBSTRUCTION TO NAVIGATION IN EARLY TIMES We get further light on this matter of obstruction from the Periplus of Scylax of Caryanda, the greater part of which must have been written before the time of Alexander the Great. Prob- ably we may put down the passage as approximately of Plato's own period. He begins on the European coast at the Strait of Gibraltar, makes the circuit of the Mediterranean, and ends at Cerne, an island of the African Atlantic coast, "which island, it is stated, is twelve days' coasting beyond the Pillars of Hercules, where the parts are no longer navigable because of shoals, of mud, and of seaweed." 20 "The seaweed has the width of a palm and is sharp towards the points, so as to prick." 21 Similarly, when Himilco, parting from Hanno, sailed north- ward on the Atlantic about 500 B. C., he found weeds, shallows, calms, and dangers, according to the poet Avienus, who pro- fesses to repeat his account long afterward and is quoted by Nansen, with doubts inclining to acceptance. It reads: No breeze drives the ship forward, so dead is the sluggish wind of this idle sea. He [Himilco] also adds that there is much seaweed among the waves, and that it often holds the ship back like bushes. Nevertheless, he says that the sea has no great depth, and that the surface of the earth is barely covered by a little water. The monsters of the sea move continually hither and thither, and the wild beasts swim among the sluggish and slowly creeping ships. 22 Avienus also has the following: Farther to the west from these Pillars there is boundless sea. Himilco relates that . . . none has sailed ships over these waters, because pro- pelling winds are lacking . . . likewise because darkness screens the light of day with a sort of clothing, and because a fog always conceals the 10 E. L. Stevenson: Portolan Charts, Publs. Hispanic Soc. of Amcr. No. 82. New York, 1911, pp. 5-6. 21 A. E. Nordenskiold: Periplus: An Essay on the Early History of Charts and Sailing-Directions, transl. by F. A. Bather, Stockholm, 1897. P- 8. "Fridtjof Nansen: In Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times, transl. by A. G. Chater, 2 vols., New York, 1911; reference in Vol. i, p. 38. n Ibid., pp. 40-41.