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It is difficult, however, to determine how far these entries on the Portuguese maps were due to actual knowledge or report, or to the traditions of a still earlier knowledge of these lakes and mountains; for in the maps accompanying the early editions of Ptolemy we likewise obtain the same information, which is repeated by the Arabic geographers, obviously from Ptolemy, and not from actual observation.
The news he heard, during his navigation, caused him suddenly to cast his thoughts on an island situate under the equinoctial, betwixt the Moluccas and Borneo, stretched in length two hundred leagues from north to south, and divided into sundry kingdoms, called by the geographers Celebes, by the historians Macassar, from the names of the two capital cities, of the two principal kingdoms; as to the rest, well peopled, and abounding in all sorts of riches.
If a sailor wished to navigate the Mediterranean and its adjacent waters, if he planned to sail up the coast of Europe to the British Isles and on into the Baltic, or to pass down the Atlantic coast of Africa to Cape Nun, he might rely on the maps and charts which the Italian geographers could furnish him.
I therefore supplement Mannhardt's evidence from European folk-lore by evidence from savage life, and by a folk-lore case which Mannhardt did not know. The Fire-walk A modern student is struck by the cool way in which the ancient poets, geographers, and commentators mention a startling circumstance, the Fire- walk.
There are numerous figures of towns, animals, birds, and fish, with grotesque customs, such as the mediæval geographers believed to exist in different parts of the world; Babylon with its famous tower; Rome, the capital of the world, bearing the inscription—’Roma, caput mundi, tenet orbis frena rotundi’; and Troy as ’civitas bellicosissima.’ In Great Britain most of the cathedrals are mentioned; but of Ireland the author seems to have known very little.
Porto Santo was in line with the ship-routes to and from Spain and all the new-found African coast and islands; and the family there, with the men sailors and geographers, and the women, wives and daughters of sailors and geographers, lived in the bracing salt sea-air, full of the tingle of adventure.
The English, though, as Malte Brun observes, they are still without a system of geography which deserves the name, are rich in excellent materials, which have been supplied by the extent of their dominions and their commerce in various parts of the globe; by their laudable and happy union of conquest, commerce, and science; and by the advantage which Dalrymple, Arrowsmith, and other geographers have derived from these circumstances.
The barbarians no longer exist to frighten his soul with dreadful war cries; they have moved away to another more remote and shadowy region, called in their own language Alhuemapu, and not known to geographers.
He told me that he would co-operate with me in every way if I cared to undertake the leadership of a serious expedition into the unexplored portion of western Matto Grosso, and to attempt the descent of a river which flowed nobody knew whither, but which the best-informed men believed would prove to be a very big river, utterly unknown to geographers.
Yet just at this lowest plunge of experience, in this drunkenness of the soul, does the overwhelming reality and externality of the other mind dawn upon us. Then we feel that we are surrounded not by a blue sky or an earth known to geographers but by unutterable and most personal hatreds and loves.
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