Nor is the practical utility of this study less important. The way
in which the world has been discovered determines now-a-days the
world's history. The great problems of the twentieth century will
have immediate relation to the discoveries of America, of Africa,
and of Australia. In all these problems, Englishmen will have most
to say and to do, and the history of geographical discovery is,
therefore, of immediate and immense interest to Englishmen.

[_Authorities:_ Cooley, _History of Maritime and Inland Discoveries_,
3 vols., 1831; Vivien de Saint Martin, _Histoire de la Géographie_,
1873.]




CHAPTER I

THE WORLD AS KNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS

Before telling how the ancients got to know that part of the world
with which they finally became acquainted when the Roman Empire
was at its greatest extent, it is as well to get some idea of the
successive stages of their knowledge, leaving for the next chapter
the story of how that knowledge was obtained. As in most branches of
organised knowledge, it is to the Greeks that we owe our acquaintance
with ancient views of this subject. In the early stages they possibly
learned something from the Phoenicians, who were the great traders
and sailors of antiquity, and who coasted along the Mediterranean,
ventured through the Straits of Gibraltar, and traded with the
British Isles, which they visited for the tin found in Cornwall. It