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 with illusive hopes of inspiring revelations, yet hiding ever in her splendid, tattered bosom the secrets of the oldest and least amply recorded of human histories.

After the time of Ptolemy there follows a long and barren period during which little advance in geographical knowledge was made by the nations of the West, nor is it until the sixth century that anything resembling new light is thrown by a European upon the topography of southeastern Asia. Moreover the shedder of that light is himself a grotesque figure, an angry theologian bent upon proving the impossible, and moved to intense fury by the impiety of those who, touching more nearly the skirts of truth, have not the advantage of agreeing with him. This is Cosmas Indicopleustes, a monk and an Alexandrian Greek, who between 530 and 550 set himself the task of proving that the universe was fashioned after the model of the Ark made by the Children of Israel in the desert. It is not necessary to follow him through the mazes of his argument, all of which he supported by texts culled from the Scriptures, but out of the tissue of absurdities to which he pinned his faith two facts emerge. While inveighing in season and out of season against those who clung to the belief that the world was globular, and against the unspeakable naughtiness of the adherents to the poisonous doctrine of the antipodes, he displays a sound knowledge of the sea-route to China, stating that a ship after travelling sufficiently far to the east, must turn to the north, and must sail in that direction at least as far as a vessel