History of Geography. Sir John Scott Keltie

      Fig. 4. (right side)

      Ptolemy had a strong tendency to exaggerate the size of the great land-masses—his Europe extended too far west (and the Mediterranean was made too long in consequence); his Africa was too wide, especially towards the south; his Asia was vastly exaggerated in its eastern extension, and many details, even in the Mediterranean area, were made too large. Ptolemy followed his predecessors in using the parallel of 36° N. as the axial line of the Mediterranean. It passes through the Straits of Gibraltar, the island of Rhodes, and the Gulf of Alexandria, and was theoretically prolonged eastward along the supposed line of the Taurus mountains and the range known to lie north of India. In respect to this line there were remarkable inaccuracies in laying down the coasts of the Mediterranean and in fixing the position of the points upon them. The sea itself was made not only too long, but too broad; Byzantium and the Black Sea were carried too far north, and the size of the sea of Azov was immensely exaggerated. On the other hand, Ptolemy restored the correct view, held by Herodotus, of the Caspian as an inland sea, and knew that the great river Volga entered it. Yet again, he knew nothing of Scandinavia, or of the land-locked Baltic Sea, marking only a small island of Scandia, possibly by confusion between the Scandinavian mainland and some Baltic island. But his idea of the British Isles may be taken as fairly correct, if allowance be made for their remoteness. He laid down some parts of the coast very fairly, but oriented the major axis of Scotland more nearly from east to west than from north to south; he also placed Ireland wholly more northerly than Wales. There is plenty of evidence in Ptolemy’s work of a growth of knowledge of remote lands, though much of it is vague, if not actually unintelligible to us. Thus in Asia he had an idea of the great central mountain ranges (Pamir, Tian-shan, etc.), for silk-traders had by now established trans-continental routes to China. Ptolemy had also some conception of the south-eastern coasts, which had probably been seen by Greek mariners as far as southern China. But he wholly misunderstood the form of the east of the continent, for beyond the Golden Chersonese (Malay Peninsula) there lies a vast gulf, the eastern shore of which represents his view of China, extending southward far beyond the equator, and facing west. Again, he had no conception of peninsular India—unless, indeed, his huge island of Ceylon (Taprobane) was drawn so by some confusion with the peninsula, as it was certainly also confused with Sumatra. Yet it would seem that he might have gathered a more accurate idea of India from the Periplus of the Erythræan Sea, a guide to navigators dated about the year 80. This work furnished sailing directions from the Red Sea to the mouth of the Indus and the coast of Malabar, following the Arabian coast, although the possibility of crossing the open sea with the assistance of the monsoon was realized at a still earlier date. And the Periplus distinctly indicates the southward trend of the Indian coast-line.

      Roman penetration of Africa gave Ptolemy some new details; he also conceived the Nile as formed by two headstreams arising in two lakes, possibly on the strength of some hearsay of the facts, and he marked the Mountains of the Moon in remoter Africa, which again suggests hearsay of the heights of Ruwenzori, Kenya, and others. The Romans had penetrated Ethiopia, and possibly the region of Lake Chad, and Ptolemy also used other sources of information about North Africa which are unknown from previous writers, but are completely vague and impossible to follow. Of the shape of the continent he was almost completely ignorant; he just realized that an indentation occurs in the Gulf of Guinea, but gave it nothing like its proper value, and carried the coast thence south-westward till the continent is broader at the southern limit of his knowledge than it is at the north.

      Ptolemy’s work on physical features was on the whole poor, and he neglected the human side of geography. Discarding the idea of the circumfluent ocean, he supposed the extension of unknown lands northward in Europe, eastward in Asia, and southward in Africa, beyond the limits in which he attempted to portray their outlines; and he even suggested a land connection between south-eastern Asia and southern Africa. Before his time the precision of mathematical method had far surpassed that of the topographical material to which it was applied.

      Pausanias, a Greek probably of Lydia and about contemporary with Ptolemy, wrote a description (Periegesis) of Greece, which, apart from the archæological value which is its chief interest, contains references to various phenomena of physical geography, while as a detailed topographical work it stands alone in the literature of which an outline has thus far been given.