Wkxxi. Mats or 
thi M idols Aon 
30 THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
Hi explains the form of the world by comparing it with the tabernacle of Moses. 
'1 u> stars are transported by angels, who are likewise charged with regulating 
lij - - The < iu-e of the succession of day and night is referred to the interposition of 
a rrivrtt mountain, behind which the sun disappeared each evening. 1 The firmament 
\tendcd around the earth, the ocean, and the stars, enclosing them hermetically in its 
crystal walls. 
Iii the seventh century Isidore of Seville, starting from an idea suggested by the 
- i iptur.il phrase, “the circle of the earth,” and deriving, by a false etymology, 
rotutuiufus from rota , a wheel, 2 declared consequently that the earth had the appear- 
ing? of a wheel, hence going back to the Homeric idea of a disc surrounded by the 
. ...l. Thuf originated the “wheel maps” which" ornament the manuscripts of the 
Middh Ages. These maps divide the circle of the earth into an eastern part, Asia, 
and into a western part, which is again subdivided into Europe and Africa. Jerusalem 
occupies the centre of the world. The north and south diameter is indicated by rivers — 
tli. Nil. and the Tanais; 3 finally, the Mediterranean occupies the ray perpendicular to 
thi- diameter between Europe and Africa. The ocean surrounds the circle. This 
bipartite division was supported by a text of St. Augustine, 4 which was much used by 
the co- mologist - of the period as a base for their cosmographical conceptions. (See 
Wheel map, Plate V.). 
What has been said above suffices to show the state of ignorance and the infantile 
"!i.:eption> as regards geography, to which the writers of the Dark Ages had descended. 
Th.- tudy of Nature was abandoned for the most adventurous speculation; there was a 
proclivit) to twist facts so as to make them agree with what was believed to be religious 
truth. In this shipwreok of geographical knowledge a few fragments floated ; some dim 
notion- of ancient science were preserved among the more learned; it may be said that 
dl the sense that was wTitten regarding Nature during the barbarous period was borrowed 
from the philosophical works of antiquity — Pliny, Solinus, or Mela being chiefly con- 
- 'I’h.' early part of the Middle Ages produced nothing that can be regarded as 
progress; geography was reduced to a simple enumeration of names of towns. The 
-<•: :. title id. is which animated the times of Strabo and Ptolemy had wholly disappeared. 
* A e.ilar opinion «u held by Anaximenes, who flourished in the sixth century b.c. 
“Orbw a rot indiuu eirculi dictus, quia nir.nt rota est,” Isidore, Origines, lib. xiv. cap. 2, 1. 
• The river Don. 
4 Is- ( .Wat. Dei, xvi. 17 --“Unde videntur orbem dimidium dua; tenere, Europa et Africa, alium vero dimidium 
Asio . . Quapropter si in duo., partes orbem dividas, Orientis et Occidentis, Asia erit in una, in altera vero 
K - «-t Afr a. Tli it system of divirion bore the technical name of Divisio or Pistinctio trifaria. The ancients had 
td'T.'d a <puuir\p ir-tie This theory, propounded by the astronomer Geminus (about 140 b.o.), was taken 
by MrV who represented the terrestrial globe as divided into four segments by the equator and by a meridian 
two f the*.; are to the north and two to the south of the equator. One of the segments to the north comprised 
t'ir ;«\rt of t>,«. earth known to the Orccks and Romans. All the rest of the globe, that is to say three out of the 
•u - m- nt*. were unknown (see ante, pages 20, 21, and Vivien de St. Martin, op. cit., p. 169). 
