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 52 will be seen that no attempt is made to give anything more than the roads and towns. Unfortunately, the first section of the table, which started from Britain, has been mutilated, and we only get the Kentish coast. These itineraries were specially useful, as the chief journeys of men were in the nature of pilgrimages; but these often included a sort of commercial travelling, pilgrims often combining business and religion on their journeys. The chief information about Eastern Europe which reached the West was given by the succession of pilgrims who visited Palestine up to the time of the Crusades. Our chief knowledge of the geography of Europe during the five centuries between 500 and 1000 A.D. is given in the reports of successive pilgrims.

This period may be regarded as the Dark Age of geographical knowledge, during which wild conceptions like those contained in the Hereford map were substituted for the more accurate measurements of the ancients. Curiously enough almost down to the time of Columbus the learned kept to these conceptions, instead of modifying them by the extra knowledge gained during the second period of the Middle Ages, when travellers of all kinds obtained much fuller information of Asia, North Europe, and even, as we shall see, of some parts of America.

It is not altogether surprising that this period should have been so backward in geographical knowledge, since the map of Europe itself, in its political divisions, was entirely readjusted during this period. The thousand years of history which elapsed between 450 and 1450 were practically taken up by successive waves of invasion from