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ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



whole period that Nordenskiold has selected it as the characteristic adorn- 

 ment for the cover of his great work on ancient and raedifeval geography. 

 Whatever Asiatic land lay north of the line of the great central sea was, 

 in a general way, associated with the Tanais, and whatever land lay to 

 the south was associated with the Nile. The Mediterranean, as its name 

 imports, was the great sea, central among the continents, and the most con- 

 venient and universally known standard for reference. 



These are specimens of the maps upon which popular opinion was 

 founded, and we see that while the Tanais was, no doubt, known to be a 



Fig. 22.— Imago Mundi, A.D. 1417. 



river, the country of the Tanais was a region considered to answer to 

 Scythia of the ancients. " Scythia was," says Heeren, "a vague name 

 " for the country in the north of Asia occupied by the Scythians, and for 

 " moderns, Mongolia and Tartary, and of it the Tanais was the western 

 " boundar}^ separating it from Europe." Of this country Cambaluc 

 (Pekin) was the capital. It was the northern capital of the Grand Khan 

 of Tartary. Cabot sailed for that very country — the country of the 

 Grand Khan (see Toscanelli'smap, p. 152), and he thought he had found it 

 and had sailed along its coasts, precisely as Columbus thought he had found 

 Mangi. It is what we still call Chinese Tartary, and Cambaluc is still the 

 capital. In 1403-6 Clavigo was sent on an embassy to the Emperor Ti- 



