ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL CONCEPTIONS 3 



everlasting fires ; bush-fires kindled by natives, explains 

 the modern critic ; but to Hanno it seemed that the land 

 was uninhabitable on account of intolerable heat. Thick 

 fogs and dust storms on the African coast gave to the 

 Atlantic the name of " the Sea of Darkness." Scorching 

 winds from the Sahara confirmed the opinion that the 

 Tropics were an eternal barrier to human travel. There 

 was speculation about the sources of the Nile ; and per- 

 haps some little knowledge is expressed in the legends 

 of the " Mountains of the Moon." And yet Pomponius 

 Mela, who wrote with authority on geographical matters 

 about 50 A.D., thought that the Nile probably rose in 

 the unknown continent of the South, and flowed by a 

 subterranean channel beneath the Ocean Sea, emerging 

 to the surface in Africa. 



Knowledge of Southern Asia also ended at the Tropics. The 

 Alexander marched to the Sutlej, and told his soldiers 

 that they had come to " the Sunrise and to the Ocean." 

 " Unless your sloth and cowardice prevent, we shall 

 thence return in triumph to our native land, having con- 

 quered the earth to its remotest bounds." But the soldiers 

 answered, " We are standing now almost on the earth's 

 utmost verge, and yet you are preparing to go in quest 

 of an India unknown even to the Indians themselves. 

 You would fain root out from hidden recesses and dens 

 a race of men that herd with snakes' and wild beasts, 

 so that you may traverse as conqueror more regions than 

 the sun surveys." l So Alexander's march was stayed. 

 He sailed down the Indus, and at its mouth he founded 

 the city of Patala, 2 a name which long dwelt in men's Patala. 

 minds as the name of the Furthest South, " where the 

 sun rises on the right (i.e. the North), and shadows fall 

 towards the South," and where the Wain can be seen 

 only in the first part of the night. So India remained 

 the land of Romance, a land equal, some said, to one-third 



1 Quintus Curtius Rufus in M'Crindle's Invasion of India, pp. 225-229. 

 Quoted in Synge's Book of Discovery, pp. 40-41. 



2 See M'Crindle's note on Patala, p. 356. The name is sometimes 

 spelt Patalis, and sometimes Pathalis. 



