CHAP. I.] 



PTOLEMY. 



559 



meagre knowledge of the island possessed by all his 

 predecessors. From his position at Alexandria and 

 his opportunities of intercourse with mariners return- 

 ing from their distant voyages, he enjoyed unusual 

 facilities for ascertaining facts and distances, and in 

 proof of his singular diligence he was enabled to lay 

 down in his map of Ceylon the position of eight pro- 

 montories upon its coast, the mouths of five principal 

 rivers, four bays, and harbours ; and in the interior he 

 had ascertained that there were thirteen provincial 

 divisions, and nineteen towns, besides two emporiums on 

 the coast; five great estuaries which he terms lakes 1 , 



cular a recent author has done jus- 

 tice to the genius and perseverance 

 of Ptolemy, by demonstrating that 

 although mistaken in adopting some 

 of the fallacious statements of his 

 predecessors, he has availed himself 

 of better data by which to fix the 

 position of Ceylon ; so that the west- 

 ern coast in the Ptolemaic map co- 

 incides with the modem Ceylon in 

 the vicinity of Colombo. Mr. COOLEY, 

 in his learned work on Claudius Pto- 

 lemy and the Nile, Lond. 1854, has 

 successfully shown that whilst forced 

 to accept those popular statements 

 which he had no authentic data to 

 check, Ptolemy conscientiously a- 

 vailed himself of the best materials 

 at his command, and endeavoured to 

 fix his distances by means of the re- 

 ports of the Greek seamen who fre- 

 quented the coasts which he described, 

 constructing his maps by means of 

 their itineraries and the 'journals of 

 trading voyages. But a fundamental 

 error pervades all his calculations, 

 inasmuch as he assumed that there 

 were but 500 stadia (about fifty geo- 

 graphical miles) instead of sixty miles 

 to a degree of a great circle of the 

 earth ; thus curtailing the globe of 

 one sixth of its circumference. Once 

 apprised of this mistake, and reckon- 

 ing Ptolemy's longitudes and lati- 

 tudes from Alexandria, and reducing 

 them to degrees of 600 stadia, his 

 positions may be laid down on a more 

 correct graduation ; otherwise " his 



Taprobane, magnified far beyond its 

 true dimensions, appears to extend 

 two degrees below the equator, and 

 to the seventy-first meridian east of 

 Alexandria (nearly twenty degrees 

 too far east), whereas the prescribed 

 reduction brings it westward and north- 

 ward till it covers the modem Ceylon, 

 the western coasts of both coinciding 

 at the very part near Colombo likely 

 to have been visited by shipping." 

 Pp. 47, 53, See also SCH<ELL, Hist, 

 de Id Lit. Grecque, 1. v. c. Ixx. 



1 It is observable that Ptolemy in 

 his list distinguishes those indenta- 

 tions in the coast which he described 



o o 4 



