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Updated: June 19, 2025
Perhaps in his madness he would really have gone on and tried to reach the Golden Chersonesus of Ptolemy, which according to Marco Polo lay just beyond, and so to steer homeward round Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope; in which case he would either have been lost or would have discovered Mexico. The crews, however, would not hear of the voyage being continued westward.
The reader will observe, by examining the map, that the army, on reaching the European shore, at the point to which they would be conducted by a bridge at Abydos, would find themselves in the middle of a long and narrow peninsula called the Chersonesus, and that, before commencing its regular march along the northern coast of the Ægean Sea, it would be necessary first to proceed for fifteen or twenty miles to the eastward, in order to get round the bay by which the peninsula is bounded on the north and west.
Ptolemy, as we have just seen, rejected this idea, and following the opinion of Hipparchus, that the earth was not surrounded by the ocean, but that the ocean was divided into large basins, separated from each other by intervening land, maintained, that while the eastern coast of Africa at Cape Prasum united with the coast of Asia at the bay of the Golden Chersonesus, the western coast of Africa, after forming a great gulf, which he named Hespericus, extended between the east and south till it joined India.
About the same time there were brought to the king from the Aurea Chersonesus, a country so called, precious stones, and pine trees, and these trees he made use of for supporting the temple and the palace, as also for the materials of musical instruments, the harps and the psalteries, that the Levites might make use of them in their hymns to God.
In that narrow territory which, skirting the Hellespont, was called the Chersonesus, or Peninsula, dwelt the Doloncians, a Thracian tribe. Engaged in an obstinate war with the neighbouring Absinthians, the Doloncians had sent to the oracle of Delphi to learn the result of the contest.
The peninsula to which he gives the name of the Golden Chersonesus, and which is probably Malacca, he describes as stretching from north to south: to the east of it he places a great bay, and in the most distant part of it the station of Catigara.
The demands on the rulers of Panticapaeum for tribute had just then been raised to an exorbitant height; the town of Chersonesus found itself hard pressed by Scilurus king of the Scythians dwelling in the peninsula and his fifty sons; the former were glad to surrender their hereditary lordship, and the latter their long-preserved freedom, in order to save their last possession, their Hellenism.
Neoptolemus defeated them at the straits of Panticapaeum partly by water, partly in winter on the ice; Chersonesus was delivered, the strongholds of the Taurians were broken, and the possession of the peninsula was secured by judiciously constructed fortresses.
Philip, full of great thoughts and designs, now advanced with all his forces into the Hellespont, to seize the Chersonesus and Perinthus, and after them, Byzantium. The Athenians raised a force to relieve them, but the popular leaders made it their business to prefer Chares to be general, who, sailing thither, effected nothing worthy of the means placed in his hands.
With such examples in mind, we may see that the names of the proposed ten states, from which the failure of Jefferson's ordinance has delivered us, illustrated the prevalent taste of the time rather than any idiosyncrasy of the man. The proposed names were Sylvania, Michigania, Chersonesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Illinoia, Saratoga, Washington, Polypotamia, and Pelisipia.
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