s much frequented by ships from all
parts of India, and from Persia and Ethiopia, and from the remotest
countries, it receives silk, aloes, cloves, and other products ...
farther away is the clove country, then Tzinista (China), which
produces silk. Beyond this there is no other country, for the ocean
surrounds it on the east."

Cosmas was the first to realise that China was bounded on the east
by the ocean. He tells us a good story about the "Lord of India," who
always went to war with two thousand elephants. "Once upon a time this
king would lay siege to an island city of the Indians, which was on
every side protected by water. A long while he sat down before it,
until, what with his elephants, his horses, and his soldiers, all the
water had been drunk up. He then crossed over to the city dryshod and
took it."

[Illustration: THE MOUNTAIN OF COSMAS, CAUSING NIGHT AND DAY AND THE
SEASONS.]

But, strange as are the travels and information of Cosmas, still
stranger is his _Christian Topography_. His commercial travelling
done he retired, became a devout Christian monk, and devoted his
leisure time in trying to reconcile all the progress of geographical
knowledge with old Biblical ideas.

He assures us that the world is flat and not round, and that it is
surrounded by an immense wall supporting the firmament. Indeed, if
we compare the maps of Cosmas in the sixth century with those of the
Babylonians thousands of years before, there is mighty little
difference. With amazing courage he refutes all the old theories and
draws the most astounding maps, which, nevertheless, are the oldest
Christian maps which survive.

CHAPTER XIV

THE VIKINGS SAIL THE NORTHERN SEAS

A more interesting force than the pilgrim travellers now claims our
attention, and we turn to the frozen north, to the wild region at the
back of the north wind, for new activity and discovery. Out of this
land of fable and myth, legend and poetry, the fierce inhabitants of
Scandinavia begin to take shape. Tacitus speaks of them as "mighty
in fame," Ptolemy as "savage and clothed in the skins of wild beasts."

From time to time we have glimpses of these folk sailing about in the
Baltic Sea. They were known to the Finns of the north as "sea-rovers."
"The sea is their school of war and the storm their friend; they are
sea-wolves that live on the pillage of the world," sang an old Roman
long years ago. The daring spirit of their race had already att