It May Appear Presumptuous As Well As Useless, After This Display Of The
Difficulties Attending The Question, To Offer Any New Conjecture; And Many
Of Our Renders May Deem It A Point Of Very Minor Importance, And Already
Discussed At Too Great Length.
It is obvious, from the detail into which we
have entered, that no country exists in the latitude which
Must be assigned
to it, whether we fix that latitude by Pytheas' statement of the distance
of Thule from the equator, or by the space sailed over in six days, the
productions of which at all agree with those mentioned by Pytheas. On the
other hand, we cannot suppose that his course was south-west, and not at
all to the north, which must have been the case, if the country at which he
arrived in sailing from the northern extremity of Britain, was Jutland. The
object must, therefore, be to find out a country the productions of which
correspond with those mentioned by Pytheas; for, with regard to those, he
could not be mistaken: and a country certainly not the least to the south
of the northern part of Britain. As it is impossible that he could have
reached the pole, what he states respecting the day and night being each
six months long must be rejected; and his other account of the length of
the day, deduced from his own observation of the sun, at the time of the
summer solstice, touching the northern point of the horizon, must be
received.
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