maps the positions of places by parallels of latitude. Firmly maintaining the sphericity of the earth, he held that the great extent of the Western Ocean was the only obstacle to ships reaching India in that direction.

12. The early conquests of the Romans contributed more to illustrate the geography of the known world than to enlarge its boundaries. The legions traversed Spain under the Scipios; became acquainted with Numidia and Mauritania in the Jugurthine war; visited Armenia, and approached the frightful defiles of the Caucasus under Lucullus and Pompey; overran Gaul, and reached the southern shores of Britain under Cæsar; and explored a portion of Arabia under Ælius Gallus. The last-mentioned expedition brings us to the Augustan age, in which the great work of Strabo was completed, shortly before the death of the geographer, in A.D. 25. He had seen, as he remarks, with his own eyes, a considerable portion of the Roman empire, "from Armenia to the Tyrrhenian shores, from the Euxine to the borders of Ethiopia," and gives a minute and accurate description of the regions personally observed. His knowledge of the globe, derived from other sources, extended eastward to Thinæ (China?), of which he knew nothing beyond the name. Northward, it terminated at the mouth of the Elbe and the Tanais (Don), as he expressly avows his ignorance of what lies beyond these rivers. It did not go in the same direction beyond Ireland, for he refused to believe in the existence of the Thule of Pytheas, and rejected the account of his adventures in the Baltic. Southward, below Africa, which is abridged of half its extent, he supposed the Indian and Atlantic Oceans to join, an idea which influenced the Portuguese navigators to attempt the passage from the one to the other. Westward, he most remarkably speculates upon the possibility, that in the temperate zone, "where it crosses the Atlantic Ocean, there are inhabited worlds, distinct from that in which we dwell." Among his chief errors he connects the Caspian Sea with the Northern Ocean by a narrow channel, makes the Pyrenees run north and south, and supposes the coast of Gaul to be a continuation of that of Spain in a right line from Cape St. Vincent.

13. The Roman armies became conversant with Midland and Northern Europe soon after the publication of

Strabo's Geography. Drusus led the legions to the river Weser in Germany, and came in sight of the German Ocean at the Zuydersee; Germanicus reached the Ems and the Elbe; South Britain was made a province of the empire under Claudius; North Britain, as far as the Grampian hills, was traversed by the troops of Agricola; while his fleet, sailing northwards from the Firth of Forth, "discovered and subjected the Orcades (Orkneys), a cluster of islands not known before, and saw Thule, hitherto concealed by snow and winter," accomplishing for the first time the circumnavigation of our islands. Tacitus, whose words have just been cited, had information of the phenomena of more northern regions; for he speaks of the sea being languid and nearly motionless, of the light of the setting sun continuing till the dawn of day, and of the figures of the gods appearing crowned with luminous beams-statements which not obscurely point to those high latitudes where the ocean is frost-bound, and the aurora borealis displays its coruscations in the sky. Scandinavia was mentioned at this epoch for the first time by Pliny, and also Nerigon (Norway) as "a great island the inhabitants of which sailed as far as Thule" but though the Romans explored the Baltic to the Gulf of Finland, they never became aware of Scandinavia being an integral portion of Europe. About the same period, the true character of the monsoons, or periodical winds of the eastern ocean, was observed by Hippalus, who, confiding in their regularity, pushed directly across the sea from Africa to India with the south-west monsoon, returning with the succeeding one from the southeast, and thus put subsequent mariners in possession of a more speedy passage between the two countries. A work of this age, written by an individual bearing the name of Arrian, of whom nothing further is known, under the title of a Periplus of the Erythræan Sea, describes the course of the merchant vessels from the Strait of Bab-el-måndeb to the coast of Malabar; and is remarkable for containing an obvious reference to China, the earliest on record connected with any definite information. Beyond the Ganges," we are told, "is an island in the ocean called Chryse, or the golden, under the rising sun, and at the furthest extremities of the east it produces the finest tortoise-shell in the world. Still further on, and towards the north, beyond

the sea which bounds the country of the Sinæ, is the great inland city Thinæ, from which raw and manufactured silk is brought to Barygaza (Baroatch, in the presidency of Bombay) by Bactria and the Ganges. It is extremely difficult to reach Thine, and few go there, for it lies a great way off, immediately beneath the constellation of the Lesser Bear; and its territories are said to extend to the remote sides of the Pontus and the Caspian Sea. On the frontiers of the Sinæ, however, an annual fair is held; for the Sesatæ (Tatars), a wild and uncivilized tribe, assemble there with their wives and children. This is a race of men remarkably short and clumsy, with broad faces and depressed noses. They bring for traffic bulky articles packed up in mats; and having assembled midway between their own frontiers and those of the Sinæ, they spread out their mats, and make a great feast."

14. The geographical knowledge of the ancient world. received its most complete and final development from Ptolemy, who was born in Egypt, observed at Alexandria, and survived the first half of the second century of our era. His contributions differ widely from those of Strabo, who was chiefly occupied with the descriptive department, while the labours of his successor were principally devoted to the mathematical branches. His Universal Geography,' in eight books, accompanied with maps, remained the textbook of the science through the middle ages, and was not superseded till the fifteenth century. The leading object of the writer was to fix the astronomical position of placestowns, gulfs, estuaries, and capes-by means of meridional and parallel circles divided into 360 equal parts, now called degrees, which, though in use at an earlier date, received a more general application from him, and were first indicated as measures of longitude and latitude. Ptolemy's chief parallels are those passing through the island of Thule, 63° N. lat., with which the latitude of the Shetland Isles, the supposed Thule, nearly agrees; the parallel through Rhodes, or lat. 36°, an old standard line; that through Meroë, or lat. 16o°; the equator; and the parallel through Prasum, a promontory of Ethiopia, as far south of the equator as Meroë is north of it. Excepting his southern limit, which is placed much too far south, his estimate of the extent of the known world northwards from the equator

is tolerably exact. But he greatly erred in computing his longitudes. Reckoning from his western limit, the meridian passing through the Fortunate or Canary Islands, he made the length of the Mediterranean 20° more than it is, placed the mouth of the Ganges more than 46° beyond the true position eastward, and fixed his eastern limit, the meridian passing through the obscurely-known regions of China at 180°, or an entire hemisphere from the western, involving an error in excess of about one-eighth of the earth's circumference. This was, however, a very fortunate mistake, since it strengthened the navigators of the fifteenth century in the hope of reaching India by the westerly route of the Atlantic, and contributed to the discovery of America. While Ptolemy's acquaintance with the globe was far more extensive than that of any of his predecessors, reaching to the Niger in Africa, which he mentions as flowing from west to east, and was also in many respects more accurate; his representations of the shapes of several countries, and their magnitude, with the delineation of the coast-lines, involve enormous errors. Thus he restored to the Caspian its true character of being a grand inland sea, and not a gulf belonging to the northern ocean; but at the same time its figure is distorted into an oblong, extending east and west, instead of north and south. He assigned to Ceylon more than four times its proper dimensions made the northern coast of Africa nearly a straight line; and probably mistaking the Asiatic archipelago for continuous land, the continent is prolonged to the south, and brought round westward, so as to form a junction with Africa; thus inclosing the whole of the Indian Ocean.

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15. It will be perceived from the preceding review of ancient geography, that, at the era to which we have arrived, the most considerable portion of the old continent, namely, an immense proportion of Africa, the vast northern districts of Asia and Europe, and Asia beyond the Ganges, was either entirely unknown to the civilized world, or had only been very vaguely disclosed. It is abundantly evident also, that, as far as mutual information subsisted among the nations of the earth, the acquaintanceship had been formed for the most part from motives that were either of an inferior kind, or positively unworthy, and had not been consecrated to its highest end. The ambition of the

warrior, the cupidity of the pirate, and the rapacity of the overreaching, were far more influential in uniting distant countries in the bonds of a common knowledge, than the fair dealing of the honourable merchant, or the enterprise of the scientific. Nor in the more renowned communities of antiquity had it been esteemed an obligation to treat the foreigner as a fellow-man, or been deemed a breach of ordinary morality to refuse the humanities of life, and deny the rights of property to a differently-coloured people, and a geographically remote tribe. But Christianity was now rebuking the general course of action in the past by the proclamation of its sublime peculiarities. It has since been spreading abroad the conviction, that distinctions of complexion, language, climate, and country, involve no distinction of species, because God "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth"that mankind," near and afar off," are sufferers on account of the same transgression, are contemplated by the same revelation of mercy through one Saviour of the world, and are destined alike for an immortal existence. In view of these great truths, the knowledge of the globe possessed by thousands in later ages, so far from being abused by rapacity, or restricted merely to commercial and scientific objects, has been consecrated to the nobler undertaking of rescuing nations from ignorance, barbarism, idolatry, and crime, and of extending to them the priceless benefits of a common salvation" through Jesus Christ; the glad tidings of remission of sins through faith in his blood, and of deliverance by his Spirit from the bondage of natural corruption.

CHAPTER II.

GEOGRAPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

16. DURING the commotions which attended and followed the fall of the Roman empire, when an unsuspected multitude of barbarous tribes, nurtured in a state of turbulent independence in the unexplored interior of the continent, broke loose upon Europe, the ancient civilization was largely swept away; the knowledge amassed in past