BOOK extend discovery by land, and gradually opened

I.

the navigation of new and unknown feas. Previous to the Roman conquefts, the civilized nations of antiquity had little communication with those countries in Europe, which now form its moft opulent and powerful kingdoms. The inte rior parts of Spain and Gaul were imperfectly known. Britain, feparated from the rest of the world, had never been vifited, except by its neigh bours the Gauls, and by a few Carthaginian merchants. The name of Germany had scarcely been heard of. Into all these countries the arms of the Romans penetrated. They entirely fubdued Spain and Gaul; they conquered the greatest and most fertile part of Britain; they advanced into Germany, as far as the banks of the river Elbe. In Africa, they acquired a confiderable knowledge of the provinces, which stretch along the Mediterranean fea, from Egypt weftward to the ftraits of Gades. In Afia, they not only fubjected to their power most of the provinces which com. posed the Perfian and Macedonian empires, but, after their victories over Mithridates and Tigranes, they feem to have made a more ac curate furvey of the countries contiguous to the Euxine and Cafpian feas, and to have carried on a more extenfive trade than that of the Greeks with the opulent and commercial na tions then feated round the Euxine fea.

FROM

I.

tion of geo

knowledge

ancients.

FROM this fuccinct furvey of discovery and BOOK navigation, which I have traced from the earlieft dawn of hiftorical knowledge to the fuli Imperfecestablishment of the Roman dominion, the pro- graphical gress of both appears to have been wonderfully among the flow. It seems neither adequate to what we might have expected from the activity and enterprise of the human mind, nor to what might have been performed by the power of the great empires which fucceffively governed the world. If we reject accounts that are fabulous and ob-. fcure; if we adhere fteadily to the light and information of authentic history, without subftituting in its place the conjectures of fancy, or the dreams of etymologifts, we must conclude, that the knowledge which the ancients had acquired of the habitable globe was extremely confined. In Europe, the extensive provinces in the eastern part of Germany were little known to them. They were almost totally unacquainted with the vaft countries which are now fubject to the kings of Denmark, Sweden, Pruffia, Poland, and the Ruffian empire. The more barren regions, that ftretch within the arctic circle, were quite unexplored. In Africa, their researches did not extend far beyond the provinces which border on the Mediterranean, and thofe fituated on the western fhore of the Arabian Gulph. In Afia, they were

unac

BOOK unacquainted, as I formerly obferved, with all the fertile and opulent countries beyond the Ganges, which furnish the most valuable commodities that, in modern times, have been the great object of the European commerce with India; nor do they feem to have ever penetrated into thofe immenfe regions occupied by the wandering tribes, which they called by the general name of Sarmatians or Scythians, and which are now poffeffed by Tartars of various denominations, and by the Afiatic fubjects of Ruffia.

A remarkable proof

et this.

BUT there is one opinion, that univerfally prevailed among the ancients, which conveys a more ftriking idea of the small progress they had made in the knowledge of the habitable globe, than can be derived from any detail of their discoveries. They fuppofed the earth to be divided into five regions, which they diftinguished by the name of zones. Two of these, which were nearest the poles, they termed frigid zones, and believed that the extreme cold which reigned perpetually there, rendered them uninhabitable. Another, feated under the line, and extending on either fide towards the tropics, they called the torrid zone, and imagined it to be fo burnt up with unremitting heat, as to be equally deftitute of inhabitants. On the two other zones, which occupied the

remainder of the earth, they bestowed the äppellation of temperate, and taught that these, being the only regions in which life could fubfift, were allotted to man for his habitation. This wild opinion was not a conceit of the uninformed vulgar, or a fanciful fiction of the poets, but a system adopted by the most enlightened philofophers, the most accurate hiftorians and geographers in Greece and Rome. According to this theory, a vaft portion of the habitable earth was pronounced to be unfit for sustaining the human fpecies. Thofe fertile and populous regions within the torrid zone, which are now known not only to yield their own inhabitants the neceffaries and comforts of life, with most luxuriant profufion, but to communicate their fuperfluous ftores to the rest of the world, were fuppofed to be the mranfion of perpetual fterility and defolation. As all the parts of the globe with which the ancients were acquainted, lay within the northern temperate zone, their opinion that the other temperate zone was filled with inhabitants, was founded on reasoning and conjecture, not on discovery. They even believed that, by the intolerable heat of the torrid zone, fuch an infuperable barrier was placed between the two temperate regions of the earth, as would prevent for ever any intercourse between their respective inhabitants.

VOL. I.

D

BOOK 1.

BOOK bitants. Thus this extravagant theory not only

I.

proves that the ancients were unacquainted with the true state of the globe, but it tended to render their ignorance perpetual, by reprefenting all attempts towards opening a communication with the remote regions of the earth, as utterly impracticable.

BUT, however imperfect or inaccurate the geographical knowledge which the Greeks and Romans had acquired may appear, in respect of the prefent improved state of that science, their progress in discovery will feem confiderable, and the extent to which they carried navigation and commerce must be reckoned great, when compared with the ignorance of early times. As long as the Roman empire retained fuch vigour as to preserve its authority over the conquered nations, and to keep them united, it was an object of public police, as well as of private curiofity, to examine and defcribe the countries which compofed this great body. Even when the other sciences began to decline, geography, enriched with new obfervations, and receiving fome acceffion from the experience of every age, and the reports of every traveller, continued to improve. It attained.

f See NOTE VIII.

to