GEOGRAPHY 



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GEOGRAPHY 



charts which make so plain to him all that 

 has been learned about the earth through 

 centuries of study and exploration; another 

 reads with delight of foreign lands where cus- 

 toms and character are different from those 

 of his own land; a third likes the economic 

 phases the study of the great industries which 



have grown up in different parts of the world 

 because of varying geographic conditions; 

 while a fourth finds especially interesting the 

 story of the changes which wind and rain, 

 cold and heat have worked in the surface of 

 the earth upon which he lives. Geography tells 

 some great story to everybody. 



The Story of Geography 



What the Ancients Thought of the World. 

 Very wise were some of the ancient peoples 

 on certain matters so wise that in such sub- 

 jects as art, literature and philosophy little 

 advance has been made since their day; but 

 in geographic knowledge they were woefully 

 lacking. The small schoolboy of to-day, even 

 the one who dislikes geography and thinks 

 that the less he can learn of it the better, 

 knows more about the subject than did Socra- 

 tes or Plato, two of the wisest men the world 

 has ever known. 



In the first place, the ancient peoples be- 

 lieved, as do all primitive peoples to-day, that 

 the earth was flat; that about it in all direc- 

 tions flowed a great sea, which was limited 

 only by the canopy of the sky, bending down- 

 ward to meet it. Each nation thought that 

 its own territory lay just in the center of the 

 earth, and many of them had legendary tales 

 of islands which were situated far toward the 

 sunrise or the sunset, in the uncharted seas. 

 The seafaring Phoenicians were not content 

 with such legendary knowledge, and pushed 

 out into regions unknown before, bringing back 

 to the Asiatic world real information about 

 lands far to the westward (see PHOENICIA). 

 Some authorities even declare that in the sev- 

 enth century B. c. Phoenician navigators sailed 

 around Africa. 



The Greeks, with their young, inquiring 

 minds that marvelous people to whom the 

 earth was all a wonder-world were intensely 

 interested in geography, and some of their 

 wise men made very important contributions 

 to the subject. It is a great mistake, for in- 

 stance, to imagine that it was not until the 

 days of Columbus that people knew that the 

 earth was round, for before the time of Aris- 

 totle that fact had been conclusively estab- 

 lished, and Aristotle himself figured the cir- 

 cumference of the earth at 40,000 miles. About 

 200 B. c. a Greek of Alexandria, Eratosthenes 

 by name, made a far more accurate estimate, 

 figuring out by means of measurements of the 

 length of shadows thrown by the sun in differ- 



ent places that the earth was 25,000 miles 

 around. Another Alexandrian, Ptolemy (which 

 see), was an epoch-maker in the science of 

 geography, discovering many principles which 

 future study has in the main proved correct, 

 and drawing a map of the known world which 

 remained the standard authority for more than 

 ten centuries. 



The Age of Discovery. The people of the 

 Middle Ages paid little attention to geogra- 

 phy. The subject was too practical, too ma- 

 terial, for this age, in which churchmen were 

 the only scholars and the affairs of the Church 

 the only subject in which they were inter- 

 ested. Incredible as it seems, the knowledge 

 that the earth was a sphere was lost altogether, 

 and the theory was developed that the earth 

 was a flat surface, with Jerusalem as its exact 

 center. A map of those old days is particularly 

 fascinating. About Jerusalem as a center were 

 spread out the known countries of the world 

 Persia, India, Arabia, Asia Minor, Greece, 

 Italy, Africa; and^even, far to the northwest, 

 Great Britain. Mountains and rivers were 

 rudely drawn, the Indian Ocean and the Medi- 

 terranean Sea wound their way between the 

 shores, and all about the border were drawn 

 the figures of the winds, each blowing with 

 all his might, with distended cheeks. Shem, 

 Ham and Japhet ornament three of the corners, 

 and all down one side there are drawings of 

 fabulous beings six-handed men, centaurs, 

 mermaids and men with necks like snakes. 

 That map was made just about the time that 

 Columbus started on his voyage, ushering in 

 the modern age for the world. 



Fortunately, however, Columbus did not look 

 to such a map for guidance, but to the one 

 made by Toscanelli according to Ptolemy's fig- 

 ures. There were mistakes in it, for its com- 

 piler had used the 40,000-mile estimate in 

 making it, but this was a help rather than a 

 hindrance to Columbus, for it made him think 

 that the Indies, which he hoped to reach 

 by sailing westward, were closer than they 

 really were, and so gave him courage to set 



