After All, The Question Is Involved In Very Great Obscurity; And The
Circumstance Not The Most Probable, Or Reconcileable With
A country even
not further north than Jutland is, that, in the age of Pytheas, the
inhabitants should have been
So far advanced in knowledge and civilization,
as to have cultivated any species of grain.
Till the age of Herodotus the light of history is comparatively feeble and
broken; and where it does shine with more steadiness and brilliancy, its
rays are directed almost exclusively on the warlike operations of mankind.
Occasionally, indeed, we incidentally learn some new particulars respecting
the knowledge of the ancients in geography: but these particulars, as must
be obvious from the preceding part of this volume, are ascertained only
after considerable difficulty; and when ascertained, are for the most part
meagre, if not obscure. In the history of Herodotus, we, for the first
time, are able to trace the exact state and progress of geographical
knowledge; and from his time, our means of tracing it become more
accessible, as well as productive of more satisfactory results. Within one
hundred years after this historian flourished, geography derived great
advantages and improvement from a circumstance which, at first view, would
have been deemed adverse to the extension of any branch of science: we
allude to the conquests of Alexander the Great. This monarch seems to have
been actuated by a desire to be honoured as the patron of science, nearly
as strong as the desire to be known to posterity as the conquerer of the
world:
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