natics; and of Indian
magic, navigation ("they are not acquainted with the compass"), justice,
&c. Several venerable legends are reproduced; and Conti's name-forms,
partly through Poggio's vicious classicism, are often absolutely
unrecognizable; but on the whole this is the best account of southern
Asia by any European of the 15th century; while the traveller's visit to
Sokotra is an almost though not quite unique performance for a Latin
Christian of the middle ages.

The original Latin is in Poggio's _De varietate Fortunae_, book iv.;
see the edition of the Abbe Oliva (Paris, 1723). The Italian version,
printed in Ramusio's _Navigationi et viaggi_, vol. i., is only from a
Portuguese translation made in Lisbon. An English translation with
short notes was made by J. Winter Jones for the Hakluyt Society in
the vol. entitled _India in the Fifteenth Century_ (London, 1857); an
introductory account of the traveller and his work by R. H. Major
precedes. (C. R. B.)

CONTINENT (from Lat. _continere_, "to hold together"; hence "connected,"
"continuous"), a word used in physical geography of the larger
continuous masses of land in contrast to the great oceans, and as
distinct from the submerged tracts where only the higher parts appear
above the sea, and from islands generally.

On looking at a map of the world, continents appear generally as
wedge-shaped tracts pointing southward, while the oceans have a
polygonal shape. Eurasia is in some sense an exception, but all the
southern terminations of the continents advance into the sea in the form
of a wedge--South America, South Africa, Arabia, India, Malaysia and
Australia connected by a submarine platform with Tasmania. It is
difficult not to believe that these remarkable characters have some
relation to the structure of the great globe-mass, and according to T.
C. Chamberlin and R. D. Salisbury, in their _Geology_ (1906), "the true
conception is perhaps that the ocean basins and continental platforms
are but the surface forms of great segments of the lithosphere, all of
which crowd towards the centre, the stronger and heavier--the ocean
basins--taking precedence and squeezing the weaker and lighter ones--the
continents--between them." "The area of the most depressed, or master
segments, is almost exactly twice that of the protruding or squeezed
ones. This estimate includes in the latter about 10,000,000 sq. m. now
covered with shallow water. T