The Voyage of Pytheas.
We have seen that in the year 500 B.C. the exploration of the Northern Seas had advanced as far as Cornwall and Ireland by Himilco and the Phœnicians. The opening up of the English Channel and the North Sea was due to the Greeks of Massilia. About the year B.C. 325 an expedition was fitted out to explore the far north under Pytheas, an eminent astronomer and mathematician. He set sail from Massilia, and passing through the Pillars of Hercules, coasted along the shores of Spain and of western France to Cape Calbium (Point du Raz), and the island of Uxisame (Ushant) off the coast of Brittany. Thence he passed northwards to the British coast, and sailed along the shores of the southern counties until he entered the Straits and arrived at the promontory of Cantium (the North Foreland). He is said to have spent some time in Britain. He then followed the English coast northwards, and leaving it after a voyage of six days discovered Thule (Norway), which he naturally took to be an island, the most northern of all countries, surrounded by a sea frozen into slush, which rendered farther advance impossible. He tells us that in the regions about Thule,[1] at the time of the summer solstice, there is half a year of day; but this probably refers to his own speculations, since he was not six months in the region.
- ↑ Wiberg takes Thule to be Jutland; but from the fact that Solinus (A.D. 80) mentions the Hebrides as being two days' sail from the Caledonian headland "in the direction of Thule," while the Orcades are five days' sail from Thule, it cannot be other than Norway. The "sea- blubber" of Pytheas is the peculiar soft slush which the sea-water becomes at the beginning of winter in the Arctic regions.
