The Fertile Regions And The Beautiful
Climate Of The South Of Europe, Of The North Of Africa, And Above All
Of
Asia Minor, present a picture which we can hardly expect will be
approached, certainly will not be surpassed, under
The burning heats of
central Africa, or even the more mitigated heats of the farther peninsula
of India. The short and easy access of all portions of the Roman Empire to
the ocean, gave them advantages which must be denied to the hitherto
unexplored districts in the interior of Asia and Africa. The farther
peninsula of India is infinitely better situated in this respect.
At that very remote period, when sacred and profane history first displays
the situation, and narrates the transactions of the human race, the
countries, few in number, and comparatively of small extent, that were
washed by the waters of the Mediterranean, comprised the whole of the earth
which was then known. Asia Minor, which possessed the advantage of lying
not only on this sea, but also on the Euxine, and which is moreover level
in its surface, and fertile in its soil, seems to have been the first
additional portion of the earth that became thoroughly known. The
commercial enterprize of the Phoenicians, and their colonists the
Carthaginians, - the conquests of Alexander the Great, and of the Romans,
gradually extended the knowledge of the earth in all directions, but
principally in the middle regions of Europe, in the north of Africa, and in
Asia towards the Indus.
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