og and Magog,
who would one day bring about the destruction of the civilised
world. These were located in what would have been Siberia, and
it was thought that Alexander the Great had penned them in behind
the Iron Mountains. When the great Tartar invasion came in the
thirteenth century, it was natural to suppose that these were no
less than the Gog and Magog of legend. So, too, the position of
Paradise was fixed in the extreme east, or, in other words, at the
top of mediaeval maps. Then, again, some of the classical authorities,
as Pliny and Solinus, had admitted into their geographical accounts
legends of strange tribes of monstrous men, strangely different from
normal humanity. Among these may be mentioned the Sciapodes, or
men whose feet were so large that when it was hot they could rest
on their backs and lie in the shade. There is a dim remembrance
of these monstrosities in Shakespeare's reference to

"The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."

In the mythical travels of Sir John Maundeville there are illustrations
of these curious beings, one of which is here reproduced. Other
tracts of country were supposed to be inhabited by equally monstrous
animals. Illustrations of most of these were utilised to fill up
the many vacant spaces in the mediaeval maps of Asia.

One author, indeed, in his theological zeal, went much further in
modifying the conceptions of the habitable world. A Christian merchant
named Cosmas, who had journeyed to India, and was accordingly known
as COSMAS INDICOPLEUSTES, wrote, about 540 A.D., a work entitled
"Christian Topography," to confound what he thought to be the erroneous
views of Pagan authorities about the configuration of the world. What
especially roused his ire was the conception of the spherical form
of the earth, and of the Antipodes, or men who could stand upside
down. He drew a picture of a round ball, with four men standing
upon it, with their feet on opposite sides, and asked triumphantly
how it was possible that all four could stand upright? In answer
to those who asked him to explain how he could account for day
and night if the sun did not go round the earth, he supposed that
there was a huge mountain in the extreme north, round which the sun
moved once in every twenty-four hours. Night was when the sun was
going round the other side of the mountain. He also proved, entirely
to his own satisfaction, that the sun, instead of being grea