Note Back to Main Text — Chapter IV · THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES. EASTWARD OR PORTUGUESE ROUTE.

This notion of an antipodal world in the southern hemisphere will have especial interest for us when we come to deal with the voyages of Vespucius. The idea seems to have originated in a guess of Hipparchus that Taprobane—the island of Ceylon, about which the most absurd reports were brought to Europe—might be the beginning of another world. This is very probable, says Mela, with delightful naïveté, because Taprobane is inhabited, and still we do not know of anybody who has ever made the tour of it.[364] Mela's contemporary, the elder Pliny, declares that Taprobane Curious notions about Ceylon. "has long been regarded" as part of another world, the name of which is Antichthon, or Opposite-Earth;[365] at the same time Pliny vouchsafes three closely-printed pages of information about this mysterious country. Throughout the Middle Ages the conception of some sort of an antipodal inhabited world was vaguely entertained by writers here and there, but many of the clergy condemned it as implying the existence of people cut off from the knowledge of the gospel and not included in the plan of salvation.