able) and taking its course down the west coast of Spain goes in a current accompanied by the trade winds, to the top of South America in the gulf of the West Indies; and there may the prototype af Chryseis (as drawn in Fig. 163) be seen; the outline of her face, looking due south, being formed by that of the coast at the top of South America, her breast at the Gulf of Panama, and the top and back of her head extending through the Windward Islands. But the meaning of the fable with a view to the subject which is mainly in question, is this, that in order to cure the Old World of the pestilences to which it is subject, it is necessary to make a voyage to the New, to fetch the famous bark, the growth of the province of Peru there. Such I take to be the meaning of this beautiful fable, and such the remedy which is primarily necessary for the cure of the pestilence. A second remedy pointed out by the poet is alum or alumine, well known to be a most powerful antiseptic; and the following lines, remarkable for a tautologous repetition of sounds they contain, point to that drug in the most forcible manner. Λαος δ' Ατρείδης απολυμαίνεσθαι ανωγεν, 1 Il. 313. What further is requisite as a third remedy (though pointed out likewise in the 1st book of the Iliad) will be stated hereafter in a more suitable place. This most important point therefore being settled (and in so far as America is concerned as an agent in it, every one of the ensuing pages will tend more or less to shew that that continent was accurately known to the ancients, and will confirm consequently the probability of the truth of the explanations above offered) I proceed to observe that if the father of Achilles was Peleus (from Tλ0s, the mud of the Nile, the cause of the fertility of Egypt,) it is easy to trace the derivation of his preceptor, Chiron, to Grand Cairo, the capital of Egypt; of whom when it is said, 4 II. 218, επ' αρ' ηπια φαρμακα είδως Πασσε, τα σε ποτε πατρι φιλαφρονεων πορε Χειρων And again, 2 II. 829. —επι δ' ηπια φαρμακα πασσέ Εσθλα, τα σε προτι φασιν Αχιλληος δεδιδαχθαι Οι Χειρών εδίδαξε, those passages allude to the city of Cairo's being the emporium of the medical drugs of Asia, as well as those of the interior of (the country of Achilles) Africa. Nor is it less easy to trace the derivation of Achilles's friend, Phoenix, to Phonicia, bordering upon Egypt; and when Phoenix says to Achilles, 9 I1, 486, Πολλακι μοι κατεδεύσας επι ςήθεσσι χιτώνα it refers to the Nile's pouring itself out from Egypt upon the neighbouring shore (that is, the breast as it were) of Phoenicia. The next character to be explained is that of Patroclus, the great friend of Achilles. In the same sense in which the latter represents Africa, or the entirety of Egypt; in that sense does Patroclus represent the Delta, a part of Egypt and Africa just as it has been shewn that the same lights and shadows in the moon by union or subdivision have constituted the prototypes of different characters in the preceding volumes. One needs only to consider for a moment the importance of the Delta (by its channels of importation and exportation) to the whole interior of Egypt and Africa, in order to have a clear conception of the friendship fabled to exist between Achilles and Patroclus. And hence, when Achilles is said, in the 16th Iliad, to lend his armour to Patroclus, it alludes to the concentration of the whole wealth of Africa in the Delta, by the mud from the Upper Nile being deposited upon and fertilizing the plains of the Delta at its mouth; and hence also in the following lines, 190 II. 9, Πατροκλος δε οι οιος εναντιος ηςο σιωπη allusion is made as well to the Delta's being opposite to the Nile, or meeting it at Cairo (εναντιος) as to its not becoming fertile till after the inundation of the Nile has subsided and left its mud upon it. By Bpionis is to be understood the Mediterra nean Sea she is copied from the map in Fig 164, |