Note 374 — Chapter I · (continued 2)

Cf. notes on p. 661, et seq., in Bunbury’s History of Ancient Geography, vol. i., on the ancients’ calculations of latitude and measurements for longitude. Ptolemy carried the most northern parts of the known world sixty-three degrees north, and the most southern parts sixteen degrees south, of the Equator, an extent north and south of seventy-nine degrees. Marinus of Tyre, who preceded Ptolemy, stretched the known world, north and south, over eighty-seven degrees. Marinus had also made the length of the known world 225 degrees east and west, while Ptolemy reduced it to 177 degrees; but he did not, nor did Marinus, bound it definitely in the east by an ocean, but he left its limit in that direction undetermined, as he did that of Africa in the south, which resulted in making the Indian Ocean in his conception an inland sea, with the possibility of passing by land from Southern Africa to Southern Asia, along a parallel. Marinus had been the first to place the Fortunate Islands farther west than the limits of Spain in that direction, though he put them only two and a half degrees beyond, while the meridian of Ferro is nine degrees from the most westerly part of the main.