320

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

wholly to Ptolemy. Hipparchus, whom we may consideras his guide, had taught that the earth is not surroundedLy one continuous ocean, but that it is separated bydifferent isthmuses , which divide it into several largebasons; Strab. lib. i. p. xi. B. Ptolemy, having adoptedthis opinion, was induced to maintain that an unknowncountry extended from Cattigara to Praffum on the south-east coast of Africa; Geogr. lib. vii. c. z and As-

Ptolemy’s system of geography was universally received ,this error spread along with it. In conformity to it theArabian geographer Edriffi , who wrote in the twelfthcentury, taught that a continued tract of land stretchedeastward from Sofala on the African coast, until it unitedwith some part of the Indian continent; D’Anville , Antiq.p. x87- Annexed to the first volume of Gesta Dei perFrancos, there is an ancient and very rude map of the

habitable globe , delineated according to this idea of

Ptolemy. M. Golfellin , in his map entitled Ptolemæi

Systema Geographicum, has exhibited this imaginary tractof land which Ptolemy supposes to have connected Africawith Asia; Geographie des Grecs analysee.

NOTE XXXII. Sect. II. P . 74 .

In this part of the Disquisition , as well as in the mapprepared for illustrating it, the geographical ideas of M.D’Anvilie, to which Major Rennell has given the sanctionof his approbation,, Introd. p. xxxix. have been generallyadopted. But M. Golfellin has lately published , “ The

tc Geography of the Greeks analyzed; or, the System of" Eratosthenes, Strabo, and Ptolemy, compared with eachcc other, and with the Knowledge which the Modems havecc acquired ;” a learned and ingenious work, in which hediffers from his countryman with respect to many of hisdeterminations. According to M. Geffellin , the MagnumPromontorium, which M. D’Anville concludes to be Cape