OF 1HE UNIVERSE. CONQUESTS OP ALEXANDER. 153 



influx of new views of nature, and more abundant materials 

 for the foundation of physical geography and comparative 

 ethnological studies. The vividness of the impression 

 produced thereby is testified by the whole of western 

 literature; it is testified even by the doubts (always 

 attendant on what speaks to our imagination in the 

 description of scenes of nature), which the accounts of 

 Megasthenes, Nearchus, Aristobulus, and other followers 

 of Alexander, raised in the minds of Greek and subsequently 

 of Roman writers. Those narrators, subject to the colour- 

 ing and influence of the period in which they lived, and 

 constantly mixing up facts and individual opinions or con- 

 jectures, have experienced the changeful fate of all travellers^ 

 from bitter blame at first to subsequent milder criticism 

 and justification. The latter has especially prevailed in our 

 days, when a deep study of Sanscrit, a more general 

 knowledge of native geographical names, Bactrian coins 

 discovered in Topes, and above all the immediate view of 

 the country itself and of its organic productions, have 

 furnished to critics elements which were wanting to the 

 partial knowledge of Eratosthenes so frequent in censure, 

 of Strabo, and of Pliny ( 21 9). 



If we compare in difference of longitude the length of 

 the Mediterranean with the distance from west to east 

 which divides Asia Minor from the shores of the Hyphasis 

 (Beas), and from the " Altars of Return," we perceive that 

 the geography of the Greeks was doubled in the course 

 of a few years. In order to indicate more particularly the 

 character of that which I have termed the rich increase of 

 materials for physical geography and natural knowledge 

 obtained by the expeditions of Alexander, I would 



