385 



GEOGRAPHY. 



GEOGRAPHY. 



366 



shield, is always spoken of as a river or stream, differing in character 

 from all other bodies of water, and yet the parent of them. The land 

 of Hellas was deemed the centre of the world's circle. The continents 

 are not distinguished as such, nor are they designated by any general 

 names ; for Asia applies only to the upper valley of the river Cai'ster ; 

 and Europe seems to be confined to Greece, north of Peloponnesus. 

 Libya signifies a part of the African coast west of Egypt. We also 

 read of the land and river of Egypt (the name of Nile does not yet 

 occur), with the ancient Thebse and the isle of Pharos. 



In the third volume of ' Studies on Homer and the Homeric age,' 

 by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone (1858), is an elaborate investiga- 

 tion, under the head of ' Thalassa : the outer Geography of the Odyssey/ 

 of the terrestrial system of Homer, of which he has constructed a map 

 accompanying the volume. He infers, however, that in Homer's esti- 

 mation the form of the world was not circular, but oval, having a 

 shorter diameter from east to west than from north to south. In the 

 map it has the form of a parallelogram with rounded angles, equally 

 satisfying the condition of unequal diameters, and agreeing with the 

 oblong form of the shield in the time of Homer; our information 

 respecting the figure attributed to the earth being derived by implica- 

 tion from the form of the shield of Achilles. The outer geography 

 consists, first, of a great mass of fabulous and imaginative geographical 

 elements; and, secondly, of certain forms of sea and land, genuine, 

 and though wholly or partially misplaced, yet recognisable by their 

 general likeness to their originals in nature. The Greek world of 

 geography proper, as described above, is the inner one. The whole 

 strongly reminds us of the Chinese map of the world. 



In the age of Hesiod (800 B.C.) the knowledge of geography had 

 considerably extended, particularly towards the west, a general im- 

 provement in the notions of European localities having taken place ; 

 the Nile also is mentioned under its proper name, and the south of 

 (the ancient) Africa had become the recognised abode of the Ethio- 

 pians, whom Homer had placed in the east and west. The close of 

 the 7th century witnessed the first essay at maritime discovery, in the 

 well-known attempt of the Phoenicians to circumnavigate Libya ; but 

 the circumnavigation of Africa always remained a problem to the 

 ancients, much in the same way that the north-west passage has been 

 to navigators in modern times. The merit of the discovery of the 

 ipheriaU form of the earth is due to the Pythagoreans, who came to 

 that conclusion from astronomical observations, but whether Pytha- 

 goras himself was aware of the truth is uncertain ; it was not received 

 generally in Greece until the age of Plato. The logographers, or 

 legend-writers, now contributed most signally to the advance of prac- 

 tical geography by the descriptions they gave of various quarters of 

 the globe. There were many others who wrote accounts of their own 

 travels, among whom was Himilco, " whose narrative," says Mr. Bevan, 

 * is to a certain extent preserved to us in the works of Avienus. He 

 discovered the British isles, Albion, and lerne, and mentions the 

 CEatrymnrides, fjeiUy Itlandi, which he calculated a four months' 

 voyage from the coast of Tartessus." In the works of ^Gschylus we 

 find the opinions of the age in which Herodotus lived, before his 

 geographical system had been accepted. They represent the world as 

 a circular (?) body, with Delphi in the centre, surrounded by the ocean, 

 which is rightly deemed a sea, aad not a river. In place of the two 

 sides of the world, we hear of the/oar quarters, north, south, east, and 

 west. We further find that he adopted the division of the land into 

 three continents ; the river Phasis separating Asia, and the Straits of 

 Hercules Libya, from Europe. 



Herodotus, the father of history, is likewise the father of geography, 

 in the sense that his writings formed the commencement of a more 

 real and enlightened system, the materials of which, as will presently 

 be shown, were drawn from actual observation and scientific research. 

 His geographical descriptions are short and general, but always clear, 

 and sufficient to show how far the physical peculiarities of each country 

 influenced the changes and events which he had undertaken to com- 

 memorate. When he found that a country was characterised by 

 striking peculiarities, he described them at considerable length. 

 Instances of this are his description of Egypt in the second, and his 

 description of the Scythians snd their country in the fourth book. 



From the preliminary chapters on the life and writings of Herodotus, 

 prefixed to the new English version of his history, by Mr. Rawlinson 

 (1858), it appears that his active and inquisitive turn of mind led him 

 at an early age to engage in travels, the extent of which, combined 

 with their leisurely character, clearly shows that a long term of years 

 must have been so occupied. Herodotus visited Babylon, Ardericca 

 near Susa, the remoter parts of Egypt, Scythia, Colchis, Thrace, 

 Cyrene, Zante, Dodona, and Magna Grsecia; thus covering with his 

 travels a space of thirty-one degrees of longitude (above 1700 miles), 

 from east to west, and twenty-four of latitude (1660 miles) from north 

 to south. " Within these limits, moreover," Mr. Rawlinson observes, 

 " his knowledge is for the most part close and accurate. He has not 

 merely paid a hasty visit to the countries, but has examined them 

 leisurely, and is familiar with their scenery, their cities small and large 

 their various wonders, their temples, and other buildings, and with 

 the manners and customs of their inhabitants. The fulness and 

 minuteness of his information is even more remarkable than its wide 

 range, though it has attracted less observation. In Egypt, for instance, 

 he has not contented himself with a single voyage up and down the 



e, like the modern tourists, but has evidently passed months, if not 

 years, in examining the various objects of interest." In fact, to what- 

 ever extent he was indebted to earlier authorities for his preparatory 

 culture, the real source of almost all that he has delivered to us in the 

 shape of geographical description, was personal observation and inquiry. 

 His accounts of countries are, in the great majority of cases, drawn 

 Irom his own experience, and are full or scanty according to the time 

 which he had spent in the countries in making acquaintance with their 

 jeneral character and special phenomena. Where he has not travelled 

 limself, he trusts to the reports of others, but only, to all appearance, 

 of eye-witnesses. If in any case he gives mere rumours which have 

 come to him at second-hand, he is careful to distinguish them from 

 ais ordinary statements and descriptions. He seems to have been 

 indefatigable in laying under contribution all those with whom his 

 active and varied life brought him in contact, and deriving from them 

 information concerning any regions unvisited by himself, with which 

 they professed themselves acquainted." By these means, concludes the 

 latest interpreter of, and commentator upon, Herodotus, " he gathered 

 the materials for the geographical portion of his work." 



There is, however, something vague in the descriptions of Herodotus, 

 for want of a means of referring to the position of places as determined 

 by astronomical observations. Herodotus, indeed, was apparently not 

 fully acquainted with the state of science, and particularly astrono- 

 mical knowledge, as it existed in his age. Thales had some time before 

 calculated an eclipse of the sun, and from his epoch astronomy attracted 

 the attention of the Greek philosophers, and facts in this science began 

 to accumulate. It was, however, soon evident that most of these facts 

 lost a great port of then- value, from the circumstance of the position 

 of places not being ascertained. Astronomers, therefore, were led to 

 devise a method of fixing the latitude and longitude of a place ; and 

 though this method, when compared with our practice, was extremely 

 rude and imperfect, yet it must be considered as having materially con- 

 tributed to the improvement of geography. With the help of such 

 astronomical observations as were made by his predecessors or himself, 

 Eratosthenes formed the first system of geography founded on a basis 

 which in some degree approached to truth. He determined the geo- 

 graphical position of a great number of places, many of them hardly 

 known to Europeans ; but these determinations were often founded on 

 vague information, and consequently were in a great degree conjectural. 

 Still his map gave a much truer image of the figure of the world than 

 philosophers had formed before him, as he took care to subject his 

 information to a strict examination. 



While his successors were slowly improving his work, the historians, 

 following up the plan traced by Herodotus, enriched geography with 

 the description of those countries which at the time of the historian of 

 Halicarnassus were not known, or at least only imperfectly known in 

 Greece. Among these historians Polybius deserves particular mention. 

 His geographical descriptions of the countries which inclose the western 

 portion of the Mediterranean Sea are as good as, if not superior to, 

 those by Herodotus of the countries between the Caspian Sea and the 

 Gulfs of Persia and Arabia. About this time, or shortly afterwards, it 

 would seem that several persons undertook travels into remote coun- 

 tries, in order to investigate their physical character, and to ascertain 

 the accuracy of such information as had reached them by hearsay. 

 The most conspicuous among these adventurers was Pusidonius. Like 

 Alexander von Humboldt, he went to the then remotest accessible part 

 of the earth, to Iberia, which was as noted for its mines of the precious 

 metals as South America and Mexico are in our times ; and though 

 only a small portion of the information which he collected has come 

 down to us, he seems to have paid great attention to nearly all the 

 objects of inquiry which the German philosopher has investigated. 



The geographical information collected by these eminent travellers 

 and many others of less note was scattered over a great number of 

 works, access to which, in the circumstances of those times was neces- 

 sarily difficult. Strabo, a native of Asia Minor, who wrote in the time 

 of Augustus and Tiberius, undertook to incorporate in one work those 

 scattered materials, and to add the information which he had acquired 

 in his own travels. His object, according to his own declaration, was 

 to compose a work which should be useful to those employed in the 

 administration of countries. He accordingly discarded everything 

 which was only of temporary importance, and described each country 

 according to its permanent physical character. In a few words he 

 informs his reader of the extent of each country under description, and 

 its chief political and historical divisions. Passing on to the detailed 

 description of these divisions, he follows much more nearly the course 

 of our modern travellers than that of our geographers. Mountains, 

 plains, valleys, rivers, and towns keep their true position with respect 

 to one another ; productions and climate are mentioned in their proper 

 place. A few short observations on the commerce and the articles of 

 export conclude his description. By this judicious arrangement the 

 sagacious Greek geographer avoided causing to his readers that weari- 

 ness which every one experiences in perusing common geographical 

 books, in which every object is, as it were, rooted out from its natural 

 place and transported to a foreign spot. We cannot help thinking that 

 the method of treating geography adopted by Strabo ought still to be 

 considered as a model, and ought to be again introduced into works of 

 this class : the late Charles Ritter, in his justly esteemed geographical 

 works, strictly adheres to the plan of Strabo. 



