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 extent used by the Arabs as settlements and trade depôts. It is obvious from internal evidence furnished by the works of Abu Zaid, of Masudi, Edrisi and Abulfeda that a few Arab mariners turned aside from the beaten track sufficiently far for Java to become a country which was comparatively well-known, but this was the exception, not the rule, and nowhere do we find reason for thinking that the Arabs ever ventured far inland, save only in China itself. In spite of a wider and surer knowledge of Malaya and Indo-China than any which at this time was possessed by Europeans, the notions entertained concerning these regions by the Arabian geographers were still very vague and imperfect. Ptolemy's misapprehension concerning the Mediterranean character of the Indian Ocean was endorsed and perpetuated by successive Arabian geographers, many of whom doubtless arrived at this false conclusion independently of their great predecessor. Some held with him that the African continent was prolonged in such fashion that it lay to the south of Malaya, while others were of opinion that the great southern terra incognita, whose existence they had deduced from unknown premises, was divided from Africa by a narrow strait. For the rest, in spite of persistent attempts to treat geographical questions in a scientific manner, and to divide the habitable world into climates, or latitudes and longitudes, the general ideas at which they arrived concerning the comparative sizes and the relative positions of various countries were extraordinarily inexact.

This is well illustrated by the two maps showing the