16 INTRODUCTORY. [CTTAP.
maining stimulus to investigation. But in antiquity the case was
different, because of the numerous questions that then remained
unsolved, and the ignorance which prevailed concerning wide
tracts of country. The belief that the earth was surrounded by
water, which we find to have existed as early as the Homeric age,
continued to be a subject for speculation down to the latest
period. Even when the Roman empire had reached its furthest
limits, it was acknowledged that there were peoples, such as the
Chinese at the extremity of Asia, the tribes in the interior of
Africa, and others by the northern sea, of whom nothing was
known beyond uncertain rumours; and, in addition to this, a large
portion of the surface of the globe still remained to be accounted
for, which might in part be covered by continents, and those per-
haps inhabited. But at an earlier period these influences made
themselves much more strongly felt. The excitement awakened
in the minds of the Greeks by narratives of voyages to Tartessus,
when once their pioneers had made their way in the wake of the
Phoenicians to that remote land, can only be compared to the feel-
ings of the European nations during the age of American discovery,
when the strange objects and stranger'tales which were brought
back by adventurers suggested the hope of extensive conquests
curious in- anc* °^ ^sequent profit. The reports which
formation thus reached them about the increasing cold and heat
of the climate as the traveller advanced toward the
north or the south, suggested questions respecting the limits of
the habitable world. Differences in the colour, the dress, and the
modes of life of various tribes in remote regions, the mention
of which we frequently meet with in the pages of Herodotus,
aroused their curiosity with regard to the lands which these
inhabited. From the time that they became acquainted with
Egypt, the rise of the Nile in summer and its inundations
presented to them an endless subject of speculation; and still
greater was the impression made upon them by the evidences
of the ancient civilisation of that country—the Pyramids and
other extraordinary buildings, the highly developed arts of life,
and the results of scientific enquiry, as shown in the calendar and
the principles of geometry. These are specimens of the stimu-
lating influence on the Greeks of an extended knowledge of