"The congers are quite
monstrous, far surpassing in size those of Our Sea. Shoals of rich
fat tunny fish are driven hither from the seacoast beyond. They feed
on the fruit of stunted oak, which grows at the bottom of the sea and
produces very large acorns. So great is the quantity of fruit, that
at the season when they are ripe the whole coast on either side of
the Pillars is covered with acorns thrown up by the tides. The tunny
fish become gradually thinner, owing to the failure of their food as
they approach the Pillars from the outer sea."

He describes, too, the metals of this wondrous land--gold, silver,
copper, and iron. It is astonishing to think that in the days of Strabo
the silver mines employed forty thousand workmen, and produced
something like 900 pounds a day in our modern money!

But we cannot follow Strabo over the world in all his detail. He tells
us of a people living north of the Tagus, who slept on the ground,
fed on acorn-bread, and wore black cloaks by day and night. He does
not think Britain is worth conquering--Ireland lies to the north, not
west, of Britain; it is a barren land full of cannibals and wrapped
in eternal snows--the Pyrenees run parallel to the Rhine--the Danube
rises near the Alps--even Italy herself runs east and west instead
of north and south. His remarks on India are interesting.

"The reader," he says, "must receive the accounts of this country with
indulgence. Few persons of our nation have seen it; the greater part
of what they relate is from report. Very few of the merchants who now
sail from Egypt by the Nile and the Arabian Gulf to India have proceeded
as far as the Ganges."

He is determined not to be led astray by the fables of the great size
of India. Some had told him it was a third of the whole habitable world,
some that it took four months to walk through the plain only. "Ceylon
is said to be an island lying out at sea seven days' sail from the
most southerly parts of India. Its length is about eight hundred miles.
It produces elephants."

Strabo died about the year 21 A.D., and half a century passed before
Pliny wrote _An Account of Countries, Nations, Seas, Towns, Havens,
Mountains, Rivers, Distances, and Peoples who now Exist or Formerly
Existed_. Strange to say, he never refers in the most distant way to
his famous predecessor Strabo. He has but little to add to the
earth-knowledge of Strabo. But he gives us a fuller account of Great
Britain, based on the