a del
Almirante_).--Humboldt's _Geographie du Nouveau Continent_, vol. ii., p.
364.]

[Footnote 4: In opposition to the opinion of Malte Brun and M. de
Josselin, Mr. Hugh Murray is considered to have satisfactorily proved
the correctness of Ptolemy's assertion that the Seres or Sinae are
identical with the Chinese.--See _Trans. of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh_, vol. viii., p. 171.]

[Footnote 5: That the vast waters of the Atlantic were regarded with
"awe and wonder, seeming to bound the world as with a chaos," needs no
greater proof than the description given of it by Xerif al Edrizi, an
eminent Arabian writer, whose countrymen were the boldest navigators of
the Middle Ages, and possessed all that was then known of geography.
"The ocean," he observes, "encircles the ultimate bounds of the
inhabited earth, and all beyond it is unknown. No one has been able to
verify any thing concerning it, on account of its difficult and perilous
navigation, its great obscurity, its profound depth, and frequent
tempests; through fear of its mighty fishes and its haughty winds; yet
there are many islands in it, some peopled, others uninhabited. There is
no mariner who dares to enter into its deep waters; or if any have done
so, they have merely kept along its coasts, fearful of departing from
them. The waves of this ocean, though they roll as high as mountains,
yet maintain themselves without breaking; for if they broke it would be
impossible for ship to plow them."--_Description of Spain_, by Xerif al
Edrizi: Conde's Spanish translation. Madrid, 1799.--Quoted by Washington
Irving.]

[Footnote 6: Aristotle, Strabo, Pliny, and Seneca arrived at this
conclusion. The idea, however, of an intervening continent never appears
to have suggested itself.--Humboldt's _Cosmos_.]

[Footnote 7: In the Atlantic Ocean, over against the Pillars of
Hercules, lay an island larger than Asia and Africa taken together, and
in its vicinity were other islands. The ocean in which these islands
were situated was surrounded on every side by main-land; and the
Mediterranean, compared with it, resembled a mere harbor or narrow
entrance. Nine thousand years before the time of Plato this island of
Atlantis was both thickly settled and very powerful. Its sway extended
over Africa as far as Egypt, and over Europe as far as the Tyrrhenian
Sea. The further progress of its conquests, however, was checked by the
Athenians, who, partly with the other Greeks, partly