8o THE WORLD MACHINE 



their heads downward in the air, which was so manifestly 

 absurd ! 



A shorter route to India ; two or more new and probably 

 habitable continents ; but one-fortieth of the globe known ; all 

 the rest a field for exploration and conquest ! such were the 

 broad and alluring vistas which the pages of Eratosthenes 

 opened to the adventurous minds of that keen and teeming 

 time. One would think that the spirit of the ardent youths 

 of that day would have leapt within them to be gone upon the 

 quest. It is fairly certain that the continent of Africa had by 

 then been sailed about, perhaps more than once. There was 

 a time when at its height the University of Alexandria numbered 

 14,000 students. On the wharves of the city were exposed 

 the wares of a hundred nations. Yet if there was any Columbus 

 to stand before the court of the Ptolemies to plead for ships, 

 we have no word. Had there been, we may be reasonably 

 sure that he never would have waited twenty years ! 



Why was there no one to venture out ? The unknown must 

 have beckoned then as now ; their pulses must have throbbed 

 with the same fever of the Just-Beyond. But they knew then 

 of no strange north-pointing needle to guide them over the track- 

 less seas. Perhaps they did not half believe that what this 

 gravely jesting old keeper of the books taught was true. No 

 revolving cylinders had yet been so contrived as to reproduce 

 his papyrus leaves ten thousand in an hour, and spread them 

 through the lands ; there were no lithographers to duplicate 

 his curious map. All that was done by slaves, as scribes. 

 Books cost them like Old Masters now. Trade was despised ; 

 and Alexander, immortal in the splendid city he had founded, 

 was among the gods. The Incas and the Aztecs might rear 

 their temples in peace for fifty generations more. 



But at least the earth had been measured. It was no 

 longer endless or indefinite ; it was now a ball, 252,000 stadia 

 at near count in circumference. A tremendous stride ; a great 

 and splendid piece of work. Above all the Alexanders, Caesars, 

 Tadema-Napoleons, I set the brain which first spanned an 

 earth, over whose little patches these fought through their 

 empty, bootless lives. Why should we have no poets to cele- 

 brate so great a deed ? 



But advancing knowledge, which had thus envisaged a vast 

 but not immeasurable globe, unsupported by the emptiness of 



