520 COSMOS. 



vast tracts of land that extend from the Temple of Ammon in 

 tjjie Lybian Oasis, and from Alexandria on the Western Delta 

 of the Nile to Alexandria on the Jaxartes, the present Kho- 

 djend in Fergana. 



The extension of the sphere of new ideas and this is the 

 point of view from which the Macedonian expeditions, and the 

 prolonged duration of the Bactrian empire, must be considered 

 was owing to the magnitude of the space made known ; and to the 

 variety of climates manifested from Cyropolis on the Jaxartes 

 (in the latitude of Tiflis and Rome), to the eastern delta of 

 the Indus at Tira, under the tropic of Cancer. To these we 

 may further add the wonderful diversity in the configuration 

 of the country, which alternated in luxurious and fruitful dis- 

 tricts, in arid plains and snow-crowned mountain ranges; the 

 novelty and gigantic size of animal and vegetable forms; the 

 aspect and geographical distribution of races of men of various 

 colour ; the actual contact with Oriental nations in some respects 

 so highly gifted and enjoying a civilisation of almost primitive 

 antiquity, and an acquaintance with their religious myths, 

 systems of philosophy, astronomical knowledge and astro- 

 logical phantasies. In no age, excepting only the epoch of 

 the discovery and opening of tropical America, eighteen cen- 

 turies and a half later, has there been revealed, at one time and 

 to one race, a richer field of new views of nature, or a greater 

 mass of materials for laying the foundation of a physical know- 

 ledge of the earth, and of comparative ethnological science. 

 The vividness of the impression thus produced is testified by 

 the whole literature of the west, and is also manifested by the 

 doubts such as accompany, in all cases, an appeal to the 

 imagination in the description of natural scenery which were 

 excited in Greek, and subsequently in Roman writers, by the 

 narrations of Megasthenes, Nearchus, Aristobulus, and other 

 companions of Alexander's campaigns. These narrators, 

 influenced by the tone of feeling characteristic of their age, 

 and closely connecting together facts and individual opinions, 

 have experienced the varying fate of all travellers ; meeting at 

 first with bitter animadversion, and subsequently with a 

 milder j udgment . The latter has been more frequent in our own 

 day, since a more profound study of Sanscrit, a more general 

 knowledge of geographical names, the discovery of Bactrian 

 coins in Topes, and, above all, an actual acquaintance with the 



