taken one by one, each climate being worked through regularly, so
that you might get parts of France in the eighth and ninth squares,
and other parts in the sixteenth and seventeenth. Such a method
was not adapted to give a clear conception of separate countries,
but this was scarcely Edrisi's object. When the Arabs--or, indeed,
any of the ancient or mediæval writers--wanted wanted to describe
a land, they wrote about the tribe or nation inhabiting it, and
not about the position of the towns in it; in other words, they
drew a marked distinction between ethnology and geography.

[Illustration: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO IBN HAUKAL.]

But the geography of the Arabs had little or no influence upon
that of Europe, which, so far as maps went, continued to be based
on fancy instead of fact almost up to the time of Columbus.

Meanwhile another movement had been going on during the eighth and
ninth centuries, which helped to make Europe what it is, and extended
considerably the common knowledge of the northern European peoples.
For the first time since the disappearance of the Phoenicians,
a great naval power came into existence in Norway, and within a
couple of centuries it had influenced almost the whole sea-coast
of Europe. The Vikings, or Sea-Rovers, who kept their long ships
in the _viks_, or fjords, of Norway, made vigorous attacks all
along the coast of Europe, and in several cases formed stable
governments, and so made, in a way, a sort of crust for Europe,
preventing any further shaking of its human contents. In Iceland, in
England, in Ireland, in Normandy, in Sicily, and at Constantinople
(where they formed the _Varangi_, or body-guard of the Emperor),
as well as in Russia, and for a time in the Holy Land, Vikings or