xii
INTRODUCTION.
while to us who, from this distance of time, look back
for evidence, the inaccurate representation of such discoveries on maps, especially in or near the longitude of Australia (for longitude could be but laxly noticed in those days) leaves the doubt whether that continent may not have been visited at the period thus represented. Hence, manifestly, it will be requisite to bear well in mind this broadly accepted belief in the existence of a great southern continent, if we would form a right judgment respecting those supposed indications of Australia which are presented on maps of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries.
Among the very early writers, the most striking quotation that the editor has lighted upon in connection with the southern continent, is that which occurs in the Astronomicon of Manilius, lib. i, lin. 234 et seq., where, after a lengthy dissertation, he says:
"Ex quo colligitur terrarum forma rotunda:
Hanc circum variæ gentes hominum atque ferarum,
Aeriæque colunt volucres. Pars ejus ad arctos
Eminet, Austrinis pars est habitabilis oris,
Sub pedibusque jacet nostris."
The latter clause of this sentence, so strikingly applying to the lands in question, has been quoted as a motto for the title-page of this volume. The date at which Manilius wrote, though not exactly ascertained, is supposed, upon the best conclusions to be drawn from the internal evidence supplied by his poem, to be of the time of Tiberius.
Aristotle also, in his Meteorologica, lib. ii, cap. 5, has