continuing their course to the north, they sailed along the coast of
Guinea all the way to the Mediterranean, and returned to Egypt after two
years absence, being the first who had circumnavigated Africa.

In the year 590 before the Incarnation, a fleet belonging to Carthaginian
merchants sailed from Cadiz through the ocean, to the west, in search of
land[22]. They proceeded so far that they came to the islands now called
the Antilles, and to New Spain[23]. This is given on the authority of
Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, in his General History, who says that these
countries were then discovered; and that Christopher Columbus, by his
voyages in after times, only acquired more exact knowledge of them, and
hath left us a more precise notice of their situation, and of the way to
them. But all those historians who formerly wrote concerning the Antilles,
as of doubtful and uncertain existence, now plainly allow them to be the
same with New Spain and the West Indies. In the year 520 before Christ,
Cambyses, king of Persia, conquered Egypt, and was succeeded by Darius,
the son of Hystaspes. This latter prince determined upon completing the
projects of Sesostris and Necho, by digging a canal between the Red Sea
and the Nile: But, being assured that the Red Sea was higher than the
Nile, and that its salt water would overflow and ruin the whole land of
Egypt, he abandoned his purpose, lest that fine province should be
destroyed by famine and the want of fresh water[24]; for the fresh water
of the Nile overflows the whole country, and the inhabitants have no
other water to drink.

It may not be too great a digression from the subject, to say a few words
concerning Egypt. The natives allege that they have in their country
certain animals, of which one half of their bodies seem earth, and the
other like rats, one species of which keeps continually in the water,
while another species lives on the land. In my opinion, it is these