ore Titan
In noctem diffusus equos, jungebat Eois
Littoribus, primique novo Phaethonte retecti
Seres lanigeris repetebant vellera lucis.
Silius Italicus, lib. vi. _ad init._]

[Footnote 315: For this whole subject see Colonel Sir Henry
Yule's _Cathay and the Way Thither_, London, 1866, 2 vols.,--a
work of profound learning and more delightful than a novel.]

[Sidenote: Cosmas Indicopleustes.]

[Sidenote: Shape of the earth, according to Cosmas.]

In the course of the reign of Justinian, we get references at first hand
to India, and coupled withal to a general theory of cosmography. This
curious information we have in the book of the monk Cosmas
Indicopleustes, written somewhere between A. D. 530 and 550. A pleasant
book it is, after its kind. In his younger days Cosmas had been a
merchant, and in divers voyages had become familiar with the coasts of
Ethiopia and the Persian gulf, and had visited India and Ceylon. After
becoming a monk at Alexandria, Cosmas wrote his book of Christian
geography,[316] maintaining, in opposition to Ptolemy, that the earth
is not a sphere, but a rectangular plane forming the floor of the
universe; the heavens rise on all four sides about this rectangle, like
the four walls of a room, and, at an indefinite height above the floor,
these blue walls support a vaulted roof or firmament, in which God
dwells with the angels. In the centre of the floor are the inhabited
lands of the earth, surrounded on all sides by a great ocean, beyond
which, somewhere out in a corner, is the Paradise from which Adam and
Eve were expelled. In its general shape, therefore, the universe
somewhat resembles the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, or a modern
"Saratoga trunk." On the northern part of the floor, under the
firmament, is a lofty conical mountain, around which the sun, moon, and
planets perform their daily revolutions. In the summer the sun takes a
turn around the apex of the cone, and is, therefore, hidden only for a
short night; but in the winter he travels around the base, which takes
longer, and, accordingly, the nights are long. Such is the doctrine
drawn from Holy Scripture, says Cosmas, and as for the vain blasphemers
who pretend that the earth is a round ball, the Lord hath stultified
them for their sins until they impudently prate of Antipodes, where
trees grow downward and rain falls upward. As for su