Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/507

Rh to have corrected and improved the map drawn by Anaximander. Hecatæus was, for his time, an extensive traveler. He was well acquainted with Egypt and Western Asia, and embodied the information he had collected in his travels in two geographical works, that have not come down to us, which were of great authority for several centuries after his time.

What these early maps were we do not know, but can form a reasonable conjecture. The earth at that time was supposed to be a flat circular plain, or disk, the broadest part being from east to west, which was entirely surrounded by an ocean, or great river, that washed it upon all sides. In about the center of this plain Greece was supposed to be situated. The great central sea of the inhabited region was the Mediterranean. The farthest point known at the west was the Straits of Gibraltar, then called the Pillars of Hercules. The southern part comprised the north of Africa as far as the deserts; while the region north embraced the countries bordering upon the Mediterranean, and an unknown hyperborean land farther to the north, with the Euxine and Caspian Seas at the northeast. The farthest eastern point known was about the western limit of India. This was what would then be contained in a map as a representation of the earth. The sun was supposed to pass under and around this flat plain, which was then the mode of accounting for the changes of day and night. The space beneath was supposed to be a great vault, called Tartarus, the abode of the spirits of the wicked among men, as the region corresponding to it, above the plain, was the heaven, or abode of the gods. The unknown region beyond the Pillars of Hercules was filled up with creations of the fertile imagination of the Greeks. To the northwest and



north were the Cimmerians, a people living in perpetual darkness; and the hyperboreans, a race supposed to be exempt from toil, disease, or wars, who enjoyed life for a thousand years in a state of undisturbed serenity. To the west of Sicily were the enchanted islands of Circe