AN EARLY ROMAN BIREME.

By this time the power and prosperity of Tyre and Sidon had declined, and Carthage, originally a colonial city, had become the most important center of Phenician influence; and from this port there sailed a century later (perhaps about 500 B. C.) an exploring expedition under a Carthaginian king named Hanno, intended to study and establish trade with the West African coast. It was a large and powerful fleet, said to number sixty galleys; and that women were taken as well as men shows that it was intended to form settlements at suitable points, as, indeed, was done. The account of it has been preserved in a short writing called the “Periplus,” by an ancient but unknown Greek; and this inscription is regarded by most scholars as entirely authentic, since all its details conform to modern knowledge, even though it is impossible to identify surely the various points mentioned. It tells us that the terminus of Hanno’s exploration was an island beyond a gulf called Noti Cornu, in which he found a company of hairy women, whom the interpreters called gorillas. It was in memory of this that the manlike apes which a few years ago were discovered on the west coast of Africa received the same name; but they are not known anywhere north of the Kamerun Mountains, while the farthest point any critic is willing to believe reached by Hanno is the Bi