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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the destruction of everything was so great that, when it closed, there 

 was little remaining but fragments of the ancient civilization. This 

 was followed by a period of repose, ignorance, and torpor, to which 

 succeeded another period, ending about the beginning of the fifteenth 

 century, during which a limited few were slowly recovering a portion 

 of the geographical knowledge that had been lost, and dimly groping 

 their way to a true conception of the earth's form and laws. 



Map of the World, Tenth Century. 



But, though geographical knowledge declined during this interval, 

 and from the sixth to the middle of the eleventh century the con- 

 dition in Europe, except in Spain and in Ireland, was one of almost 

 universal ignorance, there was throughout the whole of the period 

 some attention, at least, given to geography — to the study of maps 

 and to map-making. It was, it is true, very little, and the greater 

 part of it tended more to obscure than to enlighten ; but at no time 

 was the interest in the subject wholly extinct. For several centuries 

 after the time of Ptolemy, or up to the separation of the eastern from 

 the western half of the Roman Empire, there was an almost uninter- 

 rupted study of geography in the schools of Alexandria, in which the 

 fathers of the Church, the philosophers, the soldiers, and the emperors 

 appear to have taken a warm interest. The maps then in use were 

 itineraries or road-majjs, which were very numerous, as they were of 

 service to the soldiers during the wars that were then and which con- 

 tinued long afterward to be waged. In addition to these route-maps, 

 general maps were also constructed, to show at a glance the form and 

 proportions of the habitable globe ; and in the fifth century Theodo- 

 sius II. caused a survey to be made of the provinces of the empire, 

 which occupied fifteen years, from which a large map of the empire 

 was compiled. There was also a geograjjhical school at Ravenna, in 



