s plain enough that you have never been beyond your own island. If
you were not lame, and if you had been out as I have in a fishing-boat,
you would know that the sun does not set among the mountains of our
island, but as it rises from the ocean every morning so it sets again in
the sea every night. What I am telling you is true, for I see it every
day with my own eyes."

Then an Indian who was of our party, interrupted him by saying:

"I am astonished that a reasonable man should talk such nonsense.
How can a ball of fire possibly descend into the water and not be
extinguished? The sun is not a ball of fire at all, it is the Deity
named Deva, who rides for ever in a chariot round the golden mountain,
Meru. Sometimes the evil serpents Ragu and Ketu attack Deva and swallow
him: and then the earth is dark. But our priests pray that the Deity may
be released, and then he is set free. Only such ignorant men as you, who
have never been beyond their own island, can imagine that the sun shines
for their country alone."

Then the master of an Egyptian vessel, who was present, spoke in his
turn.

"No," said he, "you also are wrong. The sun is not a Deity, and does not
move only round India and its golden mountain. I have sailed much on the
Black Sea, and along the coasts of Arabia, and have been to Madagascar
and to the Philippines. The sun lights the whole earth, and not India
alone. It does not circle round one mountain, but rises far in the East,
beyond the Isles of Japan, and sets far, far away in the West, beyond
the islands of England. That is why the Japanese call their country
'Nippon,' that is, 'the birth of the sun.' I know this well, for I have
myself seen much, and heard more from my grandfather, who sailed to the
very ends of the sea."

He would have gone on, but an English sailor from our ship interrupted
him.

"There is no country," he said "where people know so much about the
sun's movements as in England. The sun, as every one in England knows,
rises nowhere and sets nowhere. It is always moving round the earth. We
can be sure of this for we have just been round the world ourselves,
and nowhere knocked up against the sun. Wherever we went, the sun showed
itself in the morning and hid itself at night, just as it does here."

And the Englishman took a stick and, drawing circles on the sand, tried
to explain how the sun moves in the heavens and goes round the world.
But he was unable to explain it clearly,