ut the Middle Ages hardly a sail was to be seen on the
vast Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, no ships ventured on what was held
to be the Sea of Darkness, no man was emboldened to risk life and money
on the unknown waters beyond his own safe home.

CHAPTER XIX

MEDIAEVAL MAPS

We cannot pass from the subject of mediaeval exploration without a
word on the really delightful, if ignorant, maps of the period, for
they illustrate better than any description the state of geography
at this time. The Ptolemy map, summing up all the Greek and Roman
learning, with its longitudes and latitudes, with its shaped
continents and its many towns and rivers, "indicates the high-water
mark of a tide that was soon to ebb."

With the decline of the Roman Empire and the coming of Christianity
we get a new spirit inspiring our mediaeval maps, in which Jerusalem,
hitherto totally obscure, dominates the whole situation.

The _Christian Topography_ of Cosmas in the sixth century sets a new
model. Figures blowing trumpets representing the winds still blow on
to the world, as they did in the days of Ptolemy, but the earth is
once more flat and it is again surrounded by the ocean stream. Round
this ocean stream, according to Cosmas, is an outer earth, the seat
of Paradise, "the earth beyond the ocean where men dwelt before the
Flood."

Although these maps of Cosmas were but the expression of one man's
ideas, they served as a model for others.

There is, at Turin, a delightful map of the eighth century with the
four winds and the ocean stream as usual. The world is divided into
three--Asia, Africa, and Europe. Adam and Eve stand at the top; to
the right of Adam lies Armenia and the Caucasus; to the left of Eve
are Mount Lebanon, the river Jordan, Sidon, and Mesopotamia. At their
feet lie Mount Carmel, Jerusalem, and Babylon.

[Illustration: THE TURIN MAP OF THE WORLD, EIGHTH CENTURY.]

In Europe we find a few names such as Constantinople, Italy, France.
Britannia and Scotland are islands in the encircling sea. Africa is
suitably represented by the Nile.

Of much the same date is another map known as the Albi, preserved in
the library at Albi in Languedoc. The world is square, with rounded
corners; Britain is an island off the coast of Spain, and a beautiful
green sea flows round the whole.

An example of tenth-century map-making, known as the Cottoniana or
Anglo-Saxon map, is in the British Museum. Here is a mixture of Biblical
an