2 74 



GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE. 



found hidden in scholastic encyclopedias, which, like the ark in the Deluge, 

 float here' and there amidst the abysses of ignorance. In addition to the 

 encyclopaedic compilations of Martianus Capella (470) and Isidore of Seville, 

 there were a few historians who took some interest in geography : the historian 

 of the Franks, Gregory of Tours (about 590), the historian designated as the 

 "Anonymous of Ravenna," and the historian of the Lombards, Paul Warne- 

 frid (780). There can be no doubt, moreover, that Charlemagne had con- 

 templated the encouragement of the teaching of geography, when this science, 

 not then regarded as a handmaid of politics, resumed its rank at the Palatine 

 School directed by Alcuin, who included it, with dialectics, philosophy, 

 astronomv, and arithmetic, in his course of lessons. Yet it was only a very 



Fig. 196. Brunehaut superintending the making of the Seven Roads which led from the City of 

 Bavay. After a Miniature in the "Chroniques de Hainaut." Manuscript of the Fifteenth 

 Century. In the Burgundy Library, Brussels. 



imperfect and elementary science, for it was confined to the theories of 

 Aristotle, who described the terrestrial globe as being 9,000 leagues in 

 circumference and 2,803 leagues in diameter, while he estimated the sea to 

 be ten times greater than the earth, and asserted that the latter was 1,400 

 leagues deep from the surface to the central axis, and had an area of 

 5,000,713 square leagues. Based upon these data, mathematical and astrono- 

 mical geography could not be other than a chaos of erroneous ideas and 

 misleading traditions. 



The genius of Charlemagne, however, extracted therefrom the clever 

 invention of the cadastral measurement, the germ of which is to be seen in 



