188 



Inasmuch 



Posidonius 

 135-51 B.C. 



Eratosthenes 



missionary of the Cross, of any title or religious 

 persuasion whatsoever, to leave home and friends 

 11 for the only care he had to save souls&quot; was, as 

 will be seen in our next chapter, a beneficed 

 clergyman of the Church of England, who ac 

 companied the second expedition of Sir Martin 

 Frobisher. 



For the earliest surmisings concerning a 

 western passage to the Far East we must go back 

 of Columbus, and anterior, even, to the time of 

 Christ. More than one of the ancient geograph 

 ers, in attempting to solve the mystery of the 

 world, came to the conclusion that the earth 

 must be surrounded by the waters of an unbroken 

 sea. It seemed to follow that if a ship continued 

 sailing, straight ahead, long enough and far 

 enough it must return to its starting point, or 

 reach the farthest land, on the same latitude, 

 in the direction opposite to its course. Posidonius 

 of Apamea in Syria, who lived almost a century 

 and a half before Christ, thought that the ocean 

 surrounded the &quot;Oecumene,&quot; or habitable world, 

 continuously; &quot;for its waves were not confined by 

 any fetters of land.&quot; &quot;A ship sailing,&quot; he con 

 sidered &quot;with an east wind from the Pillars of 

 Hercules must reach India after traversing 70,000 

 stadia, which he thought was half the circum 

 ference of the earth along the latitude of Rhodes.&quot; 

 Eratosthenes, who lived one thousand seven 

 hundred years before Columbus, said, &quot;if the 

 great extent of the Atlantic Ocean did not make 

 it impossible, we should be able to make the 



