153 COSMOS. 



Azores, finally came to the New Continent, which, however, 

 had already been reached by the Northmen at an earlier pe- 

 riod and from a different direction. 



While Alexander was opening the far East, the great Stag- 

 irite=* was led, by a consideration of the form of the earth, to 

 conceive the idea of the proximity of India to the Pillars of 

 Hercules ; while Strabo had even conjectured that there might 

 be " many oilier habitable tracts of la7id\ in the northern 

 hemisphere, perhaps in the parallel which passes through 

 those Pillars, the island of Rhodes and ThinaB, between the 

 coasts of Western Europe and Eastern Asia." The hypothe- 

 sis of the locality of such lands, in the prolongation of the 

 major axis of the Mediterranean, was connected with a grand 

 geographical view of Eratosthenes, current in antiquity, and 

 in accordance with which the whole of the Old Continent, in 

 its widest extension from west to east, and nearly in the thir- 

 ty-sixth degree of latitude, was supposed to present an almost 

 continuous line of elevation. $ 



The expedition of Colseus of Samos does not, however, alone 

 indicate an epoch in which the Hellenic races, and the na- 

 tions to whom their cultivation was transmitted, developed 

 new views that led to the extension of maritime expeditions, 

 but it also immediately enlarged the sphere of ideas. The 

 great natural phenomenon which, by the periodic elevation of 

 the level of the sea, exhibits the connection existing between 

 the earth, and the sun, and moon, now first permanently ar- 

 rested the attention of men. In the African Syrtic Sea this 

 phenomenon had appeared to the Greeks to be accidental, and 

 had not unfrequently been attended by danger. Posidonius, 

 who had observed the ebb and flow of the sea at Ilipa and 



* AristoL, De Ccelo, ii., 14 (p. 298, b., Bekk.); Meteor., ii., 5 (p. 3G2, 

 Bekk.). Compare my Examen Critique, t. i., p. 125-130. Seneca ven- 

 tures to say {Nat. Qtccest., in prsefat., 11), " Coutemnet curiosus spec- 

 tator domicilii (teiTae) angustias. Quantum enim est quod ab ultimis 

 littoribus Hispaniae usque ad Indos jacet ? Paucissimorum dierum 

 spatium, si navem suus ventus implevit." (Examen Critique, t. i., p. 

 158.) 



t Strabo, lib. i., p. 65 and 118, Casaub. (Examen Critique, t. i., p. 

 152.) 



t In the Diapliragma of Dicaearchus, by which the earth is divided. 

 the elevation passes through the Taurus, tlie chains of Demavend and 

 Hindoo-Coosh, the Northei-n Thibetian Kuen-lun, and the mountains of 

 the Chinese provinces Sse-tschuan and Kuang-si, vv^hich are perpetually 

 covered with snow. See my oi^ogi-aphical researches on these lines of 

 elevation in my Asie Centrale, t. i., p. 104-114, 118-164; t. ii., p. 413 

 and 438. 



