Africa had been circumnavigated
under Pharaoh Necho, that the Indian Ocean was an inland sea,
everywhere surrounded by land, which united southern Africa with the
eastern part of Asia, an idea which was first completely abandoned
by the chartographers of the fifteenth century after the
circumnavigation of Africa by VASCO DA GAMA.

[Illustration: MAP OF THE WORLD, SAID TO BE OF THE TENTH CENTURY.
Found in a manuscript of the twelfth century in the Library at
Turin. (From Santarem's Atlas.) ]

[Illustration: MAP OF THE WORLD SHOWING ASIA TO BE CONTINUOUS WITH
AFRICA. (From Nicolai Doni's edition of _Ptolemaei Cosmographia_, Ulm.
1482.) ]

The knowledge of the geography of north Asia remained at this point
until MARCO POLO,[290] in the narrative of his remarkable journeys
among the peoples of Middle Asia, gave some information regarding
the most northerly lands of this quarter of the world also. The
chapters which treat of this subject bear the distinctive titles:
"On the land of the Tartars living in the north," "On another region
to which merchants only travel in waggons drawn by dogs," and "On
the region where darkness prevails" (_De regione tenebrarum_). From
the statements in these chapters it follows that hunters and traders
already inhabited or wandered about in the present Siberia, and
brought thence valuable furs of the black fox, sable, beaver, &c.
The northernmost living men were said to be handsome, tall and
stout, but very pale for want of the sun. They obeyed no king or
chief, but were coarse and uncivilised and lived as beasts[291].
Among the products of the northern countries white bears are
mentioned, from which it appears that at that time the hunters had
already reached the coast of the Polar Sea. But Marco Polo nowhere
says expressly that Asia is bounded on the north by the sea.

All the maps of North Asia which have been published down to the
middle of the sixteenth century, are based to a greater or less
extent on interpretations of the accounts of Herodotus, Pliny, and
Marco Polo. When they do not surround the whole Indian Ocean with
land, they give to Asia a much less extent in the north and east
than it actually possesses, make the land in this direction
completely bounded by sea, and delineate two headlands projecting
towards the north from the mainland. To these they give the names
_Promontorium Scythicum_ and _Tabin_, and they besides place in the
neighbourhood of the north coast a large