THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER, 
*28 
v , Nlso , Tv us. concerning the ocean must be pointed out. Marinus of Tyre 1 rejected the opinion 
, f immcd ate predecessors, and maintained that the habitable world was not 
-i.iT.'iinded by the waters of the ocean. He held that the continental masses were united 
to other similar masses still unknown, and that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were 
separated from each other. Nor does he appear to have admitted the existence of a sea 
(l) the east of Asia ; he attributed to that continent an indefinite extension towards the 
east. It is difficult to conjecture the reasons which induced Marinus to abandon the wiser 
and more correct views of Eratosthenes on these fundamental points of geography. 
Ptolemy. 
Ptolemt’s Views 
OX TIIE MOBPHO- 
LOOT OF THE 
Oceans. 
Ptolemv 2 adopted the views of Marinus, and his great authority gave them a 
scientific stamp. Ptolemy was an astronomer, and treated physical geography as of 
secondary importance. In commencing his first baok s he described geography as being 
essentially the art of tracing the map of the world in the literal sense assigned by 
etymology to the word geography. 4 (See Plate IV.). 
The greater part of Ptolemy’s works is taken up by the tables containing the 
materials which served him in the construction of his maps. In projection he was far 
in advance of Iris predecessors, and first used the words latitude and longitude as purely 
technical terms. Following Marinus, he rejected the hypothesis of an ocean extending to 
the ' ast of the Asiatic continent; he regarded that great land-mass as stretching inde- 
finitely towards the nurth and east. Africa was likewise extended without any settled 
limitation towards the south. Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and even Strabo, did not know 
that the east coast of Africa turned suddenly to the south-west beyond Cape Aromata ; 6 
they believed that the shores of the regions which produced myrrh and incense extended 
as far as India. Ptolemy adopted this notion, although the merchants of Aden had 
informed him of the true position of the coasts as far south as Zanzibar. He united 
1 point where the land appeared to him to trend towards the east, by unknown lands, 
to the Chinese coasts. The Indian Ocean thus formed a great enclosed sea. This 
Southern Ethiopia remained on maps down to the time of the second voyage of James 
Cook/ As we have just seen, Ptolemy’s conception of the morphology of the ocean 
differed from that held by many of his predecessors. With Ptolemy disappeared the 
great geographers of antiquity. 
( A Two principal views prevailed among the ancients regarding the distribution of land 
° T,i> and water. The school that may be called Homeric — to which Eratosthenes and Strabo 
- I r La' n \ m , b* longed -considered the three continents of the Old World as forming a single island 
-unrounded by the ocean. On the other hand, the adherents of what may be called the 
Ptolemaic hool — to which Hipparchus and Marinus of Tyre belonged — did not admit 
* Flourished prolj*bly about 120 A.D. 
* Flourished about the middle of the second century a.d. 1 Ptolemy, L sec. 1. 
‘ • i-.ob hi. i g< tfrupli;.* • 4 .iif dclincandi tabulae geograph icas." See Wildberg, cited by Bunbury, op. cit., vol. 
ii r«. 54*. 6 Gape Guardafui. 
< 1772 to 1775 a.d. (wc Peechel, Geschichte der Erdkunde, p. 61, Leipzig, 1877). 
