spot. Being little acquainted with the extent
and situation of the earth, the ancients believed it
uninhabitable. Modern discovery has shown that this is not the
case as to a considerable part of the torrid zone, though with
some parts of it our acquaintance is still very limited.]

[Footnote 16: _Deep snow covers two._--Ver. 50. The two polar or
frigid zones. For as the sun never approaches these nearer than
the tropic on that side, and is, during one part of the year,
removed by the additional extent of the whole torrid zone, his
rays must be very oblique and faint, so as to leave these tracts
exposed to almost perpetual cold.]

[Footnote 17: _He placed as many more._--Ver. 51. The temperate
zones, lying between the torrid and the frigid, partake of the
character of each in a modified degree, and are of a middle
temperature between hot and cold. Here, too, the distinction of
the seasons is manifest. For in either temperate zone, when the
sun is in that tropic, which borders upon it, being nearly
vertical, the heat must be considerable, and produce summer; but
when he is removed to the other tropic by a distance of 47
degrees, his rays will strike but faintly, and winter will be the
consequence. The intermediate spaces, while he is moving from one
tropic to the other, make spring and autumn.]

[Footnote 18: _The brothers._--Ver. 60. That is, the winds, who,
according to the Theogony of Hesiod, were the sons of Astreus, the
giant, and Aurora.]

[Footnote 19: _Eurus took his way._--Ver. 61. The Poet, after
remarking that the air is the proper region of the winds, proceeds
to take notice that God, to prevent them from making havoc of the
creation, subjected them to particular laws, and assigned to each
the quarter whence to direct his blasts. Eurus is the east wind,
being so called from its name, because it blows from the east. As
Aurora, or the morning, was always ushered in by the sun, who
rises eastward, she was supposed to have her habitation in the
eastern quarter of the world; and often, in the language of
ancient poetry, her name signifies the east.]

[Footnote 20: _The realms of Nabath._--Ver. 61. From Josephus we
learn that Nabath, the son of Ishmael, with his eleven brothers,
took possession of all the country from the river Euphrates to the
Red Sea, and ca