It Is Extraordinary, Howeve'r,
That Iambulus Never Mentions Cinnamon, Which, As He Was A Dealer In Spices,
It Might Have Been Supposed Would Have Attracted His Particular Attention.
One of the most celebrated geographers among the ancients, flourished
during the reign of Augustus; - we allude to Strabo:
His fundamental
principles are, the globosity of the earth, and its centripetal force; he
also lays down rules for constructing globes, but he seems ignorant of the
mode of fixing the position of places by their latitude or longitude, or,
at least, he neglects it. In order to render his geographical knowledge
more accurate and complete, he travelled over most of the countries between
Armenia on the east and Etruria on the west, and from his native country,
on the borders of the Euxine sea, to the borders of Ethiopia. The portion
of the globe which he describes, is bounded on the north by the Baltic, on
the east by the Ganges, on the south by the mouth of the river Senegal, and
on the west by Spain. In describing the countries which he himself had
visited, he is generally very accurate, but his accounts of those he had
not visited, are frequently erroneous or very incomplete. His information
respecting Ceylon and the countries of the Ganges, seems to have been
derived entirely from the statements brought to Europe by the generals of
Alexander.
In the reign of Claudius, the knowledge of the Romans respecting the
interior of Africa, was slightly extended by the expedition of Suetonius
Paulinus; he was the first Roman who crossed Mount Atlas, and during the
winter penetrated through the deserts, which are described as formed of
black dust, till he reached a river called the Niger.
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