4 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



of the whole world, a land abounding in gold and in jewels, 

 and in elephants, and in dragons. 1 



In later Roman times some vague distorted knowledge 



was gained of the coasts of India, of Ceylon (known as 



Taprobane. Taprobane), of the Ganges, of golden lands or islands 



East of the Gangetic Gulf, and of the " Silk Land " 



(Serica) to the North. Ceylon was thought to be an 



island . in the far distance, and of enormous size. Pliny 



wrote that a Roman freedmari, while sailing round Arabia, 



was driven to sea by the North wind, and on the fifteenth 



day reached Taprobane. He stayed there six months ; and 



the King became so interested in his talk about the Romans 



and Caesar that he sent envoys to Rome. They reported 



that in their country Canopus " shone by night a great 



and bright star." And " what astonished them chiefly 



was that (in Rome) their shadows fall towards our sky (i.e. 



the North), not towards theirs (i.e. the South)." 2 Some 



writers thought that Taprobane was no island, but the tip 



of the great unknown continent of the South, " the first 



part of the other world," the land of the " Antichthones " ; 



Mela A.D. 50 and, says Pomponius Mela, this is likely enough,- for it is 



Taprobane inhabited, and yet there is no evidence that anyone has 



the tip of sailed round it ! Thus at Taprobane all knowledge ended. 



Alter Orbis. NQ trave u ers > tales were to i d of a f urt her South. The 



Tropic Seas, says Pliny, are " burnt and cremated by 

 flames, scorched by the near sun." Beyond those seas, 

 no doubt, was the " other world," probably inhabited 

 as thickly as the continent of the North. " But about 

 these people," says Mela, " we know nothing, for between 

 us and them there intervenes a burning zone, which it 

 is impossible to cross." 3 



The world Thus the " world of ordinary "classical geography," 

 ^ e wor ^ as conceived by Greeks and Romans about the 

 date of the Christian era, stops far short of the Equator. 

 The West Coast of Africa ends about Sierra Leone, or 

 the Canary Islands. The East coast ends at about Cape 

 Gardafui. A grossly misunderstood Ceylon is both 



1 Pliny, Book VI., Chs. 21-23. z Pliny, Book VI., Ch. 24. 



3 See map, p. 5. 



