450 REPORT—1905. 
There never was a greater need for close marine surveys of places frequented 
by ships than now. 
It is interesting to look back and see the gradual progress of the delineation ot 
the world and to mark how very recent any approach to accuracy is. 
The very earliest maps of any extent of country are unfortunately lost to us. 
The first man who made a map of which any historical record exists is Anaximander 
of Miletus, about 600 B.c., but we know nothing of it. A map is mentioned by 
Herodotus as having been taken in 500 B.c. by Aristagoras of Miletus in the 
shape of an engraved bronze plate whereon the whole circuit of the earth was 
engraved, with all its seas and rivers, to influence Cleomenes, King of Sparta, to 
aid the Ionians against Persia. This was probably the work of Hecatzeus, to whom 
early Geography owed much. His works are also only known to us by quotation ; 
but they are especially interesting as containing an early idea of the limits of Africa, 
which he represents as entirely surrounded by the sea—a circumstance apparently 
either forgotten or disbelieved in later years. 
Erotosthenes, 250 B.c., and Hipparchus, 150 8.c., made great advances, and the 
former made the first attempt to measure the size of the earth by the difference 
of latitudes between Assouan and Alexandria in Egypt, an attempt which, con- 
sidering the great imperfection of his means, was remarkably successful, as, assum- 
ing that we are right in the length of the stadium he used, he made the circum- 
ference of the globe 25,000 geographical miles, whereas it should be 21,600. 
He also devised the system of meridians and parallels as we now have them; 
but the terms ‘latitude’ and ‘longitude,’ to denote positions on those circles, were 
introduced by Ptolemy. 
The maps of Ptolemy, the great Alexandrian astronomer and geographer of 
A.D. 150, are the earliest we possess. He drew, besides a general map of the whole 
known world from the southern part of the Baltic to the Gulf of Guinea, north 
and south, and from the Canary Islands to the China Sea, east and west, a series 
of twenty-six maps of the different parts. 
Ptolemy’s maps and his method of representing the spherical globe on a flat 
surface had a great influence on Geography for many years. After his time the 
Greek civilisation waned, and the general decline of the Roman Empire, followed 
by its disruption by the invasion of barbarians, closed the course of discovery in 
all branches of research for centuries. It is not too much to say that for 1,300 
years no advance was made, and until the commencement of exploration by sea, 
which accompanied the general revival of learning in the fifteenth century, 
Ptolemy’s maps represented the knowledge of the world. 
As might be expected, the further he got from the Mediterranean, the greater 
were his errors; and his representations of Hastern Asia and North-Western Europe 
are somewhat grotesque, though quite recognisable in the main. 
Of Africa south of the Equator he knows nothing, and his map of it terminates 
with the border. 
This is somewhat remarkable, as I am one of those who firmly believe in the 
circumnavigation of Africa by the Phoenicians sent by Necho, King of Egypt, in 
600 3.c. from the head of the Red Sea. As described by. Herodotus, the voyage 
has all the impress of veracity. My personal faith in Herodotus was much strength- 
ened by finding when I surveyed the Dardanelles in 1872 that his dimensions of that 
strait were nearer the truth than those of other and later authorities, even down 
to the time at which I was at work, as well as by other geographical tests | was 
‘able to apply. When, therefore, he records that the Phoenicians declared that in 
their voyage they had the sun on their right hand, and says he does not believe it, 
he registers an item of information which goes far to prove the story correct. In- 
fluenced by Hecatzeus, who though surrounding Africa by the sea cut it far short 
of the Equator, Herodotus could not conceive that the travellers had passed to 
the south of the sun when it was in the southern tropic. 
No historical incident has been more discussed than this voyage, commentators 
varying much in their opinions of its truth. But we have to-day some new facts. 
No one who has followed the exploration of the ancient buildings in Rhodesia, 
and considered the information we possess on the early inhabitants of Southern 
