ject. In the early stages they possibly
learned something from the Phoenicians, who were the great traders
and sailors of antiquity, and who coasted along the Mediterranean,
ventured through the Straits of Gibraltar, and traded with the
British Isles, which they visited for the tin found in Cornwall. It
is even said that one of their admirals, at the command of Necho,
king of Egypt, circumnavigated Africa, for Herodotus reports that
on the homeward voyage the sun set in the sea on the right hand.
But the Phoenicians kept their geographical knowledge to themselves
as a trade secret, and the Greeks learned but little from them.

The first glimpse that we have of the notions which the Greeks
possessed of the shape and the inhabitants of the earth is afforded
by the poems passing under the name of HOMER. These poems show an
intimate knowledge of Northern Greece and of the western coasts of
Asia Minor, some acquaintance with Egypt, Cyprus, and Sicily; but
all the rest, even of the Eastern Mediterranean, is only vaguely
conceived by their author. Where he does not know he imagines,
and some of his imaginings have had a most important influence
upon the progress of geographical knowledge. Thus he conceives of
the world as being a sort of flat shield, with an extremely wide
river surrounding it, known as Ocean. The centre of this shield
was at Delphi, which was regarded as the "navel" of the inhabited
world. According to Hesiod, who is but little later than Homer, up
in the far north were placed a people known as the _Hyperboreani_, or
those who dwelt at the back of the north wind; whilst a corresponding
place in the south was taken by the Abyssinians. All these four
conceptions had an important influence upon the views that men had
of the world up to times comparatively recent. Homer also mentioned
the pigmies as living in Africa. These were regarded as fabulous,
till they were re-discovered by Dr. Schweinfurth and Mr. Stanley
in our own time.

It is probably from the Babylonians that the Greeks obtained the
idea of an all-encircling ocean. Inhabitants of Mesopotamia would
find themselves reaching the ocean in almost any direction in which
they travelled, either the Caspian, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean,
or the Persian Gulf. Accordingly, the oldest map of the world which
has been found is one accompanying a cuneiform inscription, and
representing the plain of Mesopotamia with the Euphrates flowing
through it, and the wh