A Book of Discovery. M. B. Synge

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      A LITTLE OLD WORLD

      No story is complete unless it begins at the very beginning. But where is the beginning? Where is the dawn of geography—the knowledge of our earth? What was it like before the first explorers made their way into distant lands? Every day that passes we are gaining fresh knowledge of the dim and silent past.

      Every day men are patiently digging in the old heaps that were once the sites of busy cities, and, as a result of their unwearying toil, they are revealing to us the life-stories of those who dwelt therein; they are disclosing secrets writ on weather-worn stones and tablets, bricks and cylinders, never before even guessed at.

      Thus we read the wondrous story of ancient days, and breathlessly wonder what marvellous discovery will thrill us next.

      For the earliest account of the old world—a world made up apparently of a little land and a little water—we turn to an old papyrus, the oldest in existence, which tells us in familiar words, unsurpassed for their exquisite poetry and wondrous simplicity, of that great dateless time so full of mystery and awe.

      "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. … And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God … divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. … And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. … And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas."

      Thus beautifully did the children of men express their earliest idea of the world's distribution of land and water.

THE GARDEN OF EDEN WITH ITS FOUR RIVERS. From the Hereford Map of the World.

      And where, on our modern maps, was this little earth, and what was it like? Did trees and flowers cover the land? Did rivers flow into the sea? Listen again to the old tradition that still rings down the ages—

      "And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden … and a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads. The name of the first is Pison … and the name of the second river is Gihon; the name of the third river is Hiddekel (Tigris). And the fourth river is Euphrates."

      Now look at a modern map of Asia. Between Arabia and Persia there is a long valley watered by the Tigris and Euphrates, rivers which rise in Armenia and flow into the Persian Gulf. This region was the traditional "cradle of the human race." Around and beyond was a great world, a world with great surging seas, with lands of trees and flowers, a world with continents and lakes and bays and capes, with islands and mountains and rivers.

      There were vast deserts of sand rolling away to right and to left; there were mountains up which no man had climbed; there were stormy seas over which no ship had ever sailed. But these men of old had never explored far. They believed that their world was just a very little world with no other occupants than themselves. They believed it to be flat, with mountains at either end on which rested a solid metal dome known as the "firmament."

      In this shining circle were windows, in and out of which the sun would creep by day and the moon and stars by night. And the whole of this world was, they thought, balanced on the waters. There was water above, the "waters that be above the firmament," and water below, and water all round.

BABYLONIAN MAP OF THE WORLD ON CLAY. Showing the ocean surrounding the world and the position of Babylon on the Euphrates. In the British Museum.

      Long ages pass away. Let us look again at the green valley of the Euphrates and Tigris. It has been called the "nursery of nations"—names have been given to various regions round about, and cities have arisen on the banks of the rivers. Babylonia, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, Assyria—all these long names belonged to this region, and around each centres some of the most interesting history and legend in the world.

      Rafts on the river and caravans on the land carried merchandise far and wide—men made their way to the "Sea of the Rising Sun," as they called the Persian Gulf, and to the "Sea of the Setting Sun," as they called the Mediterranean. They settled on the shores of the Caspian Sea, on the shores of the Black Sea, on the shores of the Red Sea. They carried on magnificent trade—cedar, pine, and cypress were brought from Lebanon to Chaldea, limestone and marble from Syria, copper and lead from the shores of the Black Sea.

      And these dwellers about Babylonia built up a wonderful civilisation. They had temples and brick-built houses, libraries of tablets revealing knowledge of astronomy and astrology; they had a literature of their own. Suddenly from out the city of Ur (Kerbela), near the ancient mouth of the Euphrates, appears a traveller. There had doubtless been many before, but records are scanty and hard to piece together, and a detailed account of a traveller with a name is very interesting.

      "Abram went … forth to go into the land of Canaan. … And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South. And there was a famine in the land. And Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there." He would have travelled by the chief caravan routes of Syria into Egypt. Here about the fertile mouth of the Nile he would have found an ancient civilisation as wonderful as that to which he was accustomed in Babylonia. It was a grain-growing country, and when there was famine in other lands, there was always "corn in Egypt"—thanks to the mighty life-giving Nile.

      But we must not linger over the old civilisation, over the wonderful Empire governed by the Pharaohs or kings, first from Memphis (Cairo) and