DECLINE OF ATTEMPTED DISCOVERIES. 15 
Centuries then roll by, without the record of 
any attempt being made to resume this effort. 
About 150 years B.C. the accounts of Africa 
haying eyer been circumnavigated, appear in- 
deed to have become apocryphal. And when, 
after the time of Ptolemy, all science and learn- 
ing began to decay — rapidly declining, until 
finally extinguished in the dark night of igno- 
rance which followed — the idea of geographical 
research died out also. 
In the time of Epiphanius (born a.d. 430) 
we have him giving this exposition of the eon- 
temptable ignorance of the age, in the science 
of geography. " The Pison," he says, "is the 
same as the Indians and Ethiopians call Ganges, 
and the Greeks " Indus"; it flows through the 
whole of Ethiopia, and discharges itself at last 
into the Ocean at Gades." (Gibraltar !) 
Such are the few faint traces of ancient 
knowledge respecting South Africa, nor do we 
again find mention of it, or any expedition likely 
to bring its exact locality into note, until the 
days immediately preceding those of "the great 
discoverer of it," Bartholomew Diaz. 
The haughty Venetians, in first introducing 
the mariner's compass from Asia to Europe, 
little thought that they were bringing it into 
the hands of their jealous Portuguese neigh- 
bours, as the insignificant, though certain in- 
