HISTORICAL t GEOGRAPHY
THE BRITISH COLONIES
Vol. VI AUSTRALASIA
Part I HISTORY
CHAPTER I
THE OLD PACIFIC
In ancient times men often discussed whether there was Pyehistorie a great Southland in which Southlanders dwelt. Aristotelians ^^/"j ec ^ e thought that there was, because the southern must be like the Pacific northern hemisphere (350 b.c.). 1 Pomponius Mela agreed, ™y ( jf/Jaf } ' adding that the Southlanders (Antichthones) have never passed to us nor we to them, that being impossible. Bede echoed what Mela had said about the Southlanders (antipodes) (700 a.D.) and Roger Bacon (1267 a.d.) and Albertus Magnus (1270 a. d.) peopled Bede's Southland down to 66° and 50 0 south latitude respectively; 2 but all during the middle ages experience and theology ranged themselves on the side of Ptolemy, in whose geographical scheme there was no room for the Southlanders of whom Aristotle and Mela had written. When the doubling of the Cape by Diaz
1 Aristotle, Tltpl Koa/xov, chap, iii, v.
2 Mela, De Situ, I. i ; Bede, De EL Phil, iv. ; ed. 16S8 of Opera Omnia, vol. ii. p. 225 ; R. Bacon, Opus Majus, cd. J. H. Bridges, i. 293 ; Albertus, Phil. Priuc. lib. cosm., 14 b, &c, cited by Humboldt, Ex. crû. de VHist. de la Geogr., i. 55.
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