110 History of Nature. [BooK II. 



chants, were driven by tempestuous Weather, and cast upon 

 Germany. Thus the Seas flowing on every Side about this 

 divided Globe, bereave us of a Part of the World : so that 

 neither from thence hither, nor from hence thither, is there 

 a Passage. The Contemplation of this, serving to discover 

 the Vanity of Men, seenieth to require that I should submit 

 to the Eye, how great this is, whatever it be ; and wherein 

 there is nothing sufficient to satisfy the Appetite of every 

 Man. 



CHAPTER LXVIII. 



What Portion of the Earth is habitable. 



Now, in the first Place, it seems to be computed as if the 

 Earth were the just Half of the Globe, and that no Portion 

 of it were cut off by the Ocean: which notwithstanding, 

 clasping round about all the midst thereof, yielding forth 

 and receiving again all other Waters, and what Exhalations 

 go out into Clouds, and feeding the very Stars, so many as 

 they be, and of such great magnitude ; what a mighty Space 

 will it be thought to take up, and how little can there be left 

 for men to inhabit ! Surely the possession of so vast a Mass 

 must be excessive and infinite. Add to this, that of that 

 which is left, the Heaven hath taken away the greater Part. 

 For whereas there be of the Heaven five Parts, which they 



bold singularity of their voyage. See the " Agricola " of Tacitus, cap. 

 xxviii., translated by Murphy. 



It would even appear that such distressed strangers were deemed a 

 proper sacrifice to the gods : Herodotus reports it as a tradition (book ii.) 

 that when Hercules, in his journeyings, arrived in Egypt, the Egyptians 

 crowned him with a garland, and designed to sacrifice him to Jupiter, if 

 he had not delivered himself by his great strength. The objection of the 

 historian to this story, on the ground of the unbloody sacrifices of the 

 Egyptians, is sufficiently answered by the fact that they were in the habit 

 of sacrificing red-haired men to their evil deity. Again, in his fourth book, 

 he says, that the Taurians, a people of Scythia, were accustomed to sacrifice 

 to a virgin all strangers that suffered shipwreck on their coast, and all 

 Grecian sailors they were able to seize. The people of Israel, on the con- 

 trary, were commanded by their law kindly to welcome strangers; for 

 they themselves had been strangers in a foreign land. Wern. Club. 



