Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/21

 CHAP. I. 8. INTRODUCTION. / says, he speaks of an estuary or gulf, extending from the winter tropic towards the south pole. 1 Now any one quitting this, might still be in the ocean ; but for a person to leave the whole and still to be in the whole, is an impossibility. But Homer says, that leaving the flow of the river, the ship entered on the waves of the sea, which is the same as the ocean. If you take it otherwise you make him say, that de- parting from the ocean he came to the ocean. But this re- quires further discussion. >j 8. Perception and experience alike inform us, that the earth^^ we inhabit is an island : since wherever men have approached the termination of the land, the sea, which we designate ocean, has been met with : and reason assures us of the similarity of those places which our senses have not been permitted to sur- vey. For in the east 2 the land occupied by the Indians, and in the west by the Iberians and Maurusians, 3 is wholly en- compassed [by water], and so is the greater part on the south 4 and north. 5 And as to what remains as yet unexplored by us, because navigators, sailing from opposite points, have not hitherto fallen in with each other, it is not much, as any one may see who will compare the distances between those places with which we are already acquainted. Nor is it likely that the Atlantic Ocean is divided into two seas by narrow isthmuses so placed as to prevent circumnavigation: how much more probable that it is confluent and uninterrupted ! Those who have returned from an attempt to circumnavigate 1 This direction would indicate a gulf, the seaward side of which should be opposite the Libo-notus of the ancients. Now the mutilated passage of Crates has reference to the opening of the twelfth book of the Odyssey, descriptive of Ulysses' departure from Cimmeria, after his visit to the infernal regions. Those Cimmerians were the people who inha- bited Campania, and the land round Bam, near to lake Avernus, and the entrance into Hades. As these places are situated close to the bay of Naples, which occupies the exact position described by Crates, it is pro- bable this was the bay he intended. 2 What Strabo calls the eastern side of the continent, comprises that portion of India between Cape Comorin and Tana-serim, to the west of the kingdom of Siam : further than which he was not acquainted. 3 Strabo's acquaintance with Western Africa did not go further than Cape Nun, 214 leagues distant from the Strait of Gibraltar. 4 By the south is intended the whole land from the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea to Cape Comorin. 5 From Cape Finisterre to the mouth of the Elbe.