* * * * *

HANNO'S PERIPLUS.

"Mr. Hampson" has served the cause of truth in defending Hanno and the
Carthaginians from the charge of cruelty, brought against them by Mr.
Attorney-General Bannister. A very slender investigation of the bearings
of the narration would have prevented it. I know not how Dr. Falconer
deals with it, not having his little volume at hand; but in so common a
book as the _History of Maritime Discovery_, which forms part of
Lardner's _Cabinet Cyclopædia_, it is stated that these _Gorillæ_ were
probably some species of _ourang-outang_. Purchas says they might be the
_baboons_ or _Pongos_ of those parts.

The amusing, and always interesting, Italian, Hakluyt, in the middle of
the sixteenth century, gives a very good version of the [Greek: ANNONOS
PERIPLOUS], with a preliminary discourse, which would also have
undeceived Mr. Bannister, had he been acquainted with it, and prevented
Mr. Hampson's pleasant exposure of his error.

Ramusio says, "Seeing that in the Voyage of Hanno there are many parts
worthy of considerate attention, I have judged that it would be highly
gratifying to the studious if I were here to write down a few extracts
from certain memoranda which I formerly noted on hearing a respectable
Portugese pilot, in frequent conversations with the Count Raimondo della
Torre, at Venice, illustrate this Voyage of Hanno, when read to him,
from his own experience." There are, of course, some erroneous notions
in the information of the pilot, and in the deductions made from it by
Ramusio; but the former had the sagacity to see the truth respecting
this _Gorgon Island full of hairy men and women_. I will not spoil the