CHAPTER I 



ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL CONCEPTIONS OF 

 THE LAND OF THE SOUTH 



AUTHORITIES : 



RAINAUD'S Le Continent Austral. 



FISKE'S Discovery of America. , 



BEAZLEY'S Dawn of Modern Geography. 



TILLTNGHAST'S Essay on The Geographical Knowledge of the 



Ancients in WINSOR, Vol. I. 

 The Topographia Christiana of COSMAS INDICOPLEUSTES, 



ed. M'CRINDLE (Hakluyt Society). 

 RAWLINSON'S India and the Western World. 

 The Opus Majus of ROGER BACON, ed. BRIDGES. 



THE story may begin in a Greek Utopia, written by an A Greek 

 author named Theopompus about 350 B.C. theSouth 



" At length in process of talk Selenus told Midas of 

 certain islands named Europia, Asia, ' and Libia, which 

 the Ocean Sea circumscribeth and compasseth round 

 about ; and that without this world there is a continent 

 or parcel of dry -land which in greatness is infinite and 

 immeasurable " ; and he told of its " green meadows 

 and pasture plots," its " big and mighty beasts," its 

 gigantic men, who, " in the same climate exceed the 

 stature of us twice," its " many and divers cities, its 

 laws and ordinances clean contrary to ours." 1 



The world, then, according to " the son of a nymph," 

 consists of " three islands," or rather of one island com- 



1 Major's Early Voyages to Australia (Hak. Soc.), p. i. (note). See 

 longer quotation in Tillinghast's admirable essay on The Geographical 

 Knowledge of the Ancients in Justin Winsor, vol. i. p. 22, note i. 



