THE WORLD IS ROUND.
The following is an extract from a modernized version of "The Voyages and Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Kt." He set out in 1322 and was thirty years in making his "Voyages and Travels," an account of which he wrote in French, and this was afterwards Englished, probably by some one else.
"And men may prove by experience and their understanding, that if a man found passages by ships, he might go by ships all round the world, above and beneath; which I prove thus, after what I have seen. For I have been towards the parts of Brabant, and found by the astrolabe that the polar star is fifty-three degrees high; and further, in Germany and Bohemia, it has fifty-eight degrees; and still further towards the north it is sixty-two degrees and some minutes; for I myself have measured it by the astrolabe. Now you shall know that opposite the polar star is the other star, called antarctic, as I have said before. These two stars are fixed; and about them all the firmament turns as a wheel that turns on its axle-tree; so that those stars bear the firmament in two equal parts; so that it has as much above as it has beneath.... And if I had company and shipping to go further, I believe certainly that we should have seen all the roundness of the firmament all about. For, as I have told you before, the half of the firmament is between the two stars, which half I have seen. And the other half I have seen towards the north, under the polar star, sixty-two degrees and ten minutes; and towards the south, I have seen under the antarctic thirty-three degrees and sixteen minutes; and the half of the firmament in all contains but one hundred and eighty degrees, of which I have seen sixty-two on the one part, and thirty-three on the other, which makes ninety-five degrees, and nearly the half of a degree; so that I have seen all the firmament except eighty-four degrees and the half of a degree; and that is not the fourth part of the firmament. By which I tell you, certainly, that men may go all round the world, as well under as above, and return to their country, if they had company, and shipping, and guides; and always they would find men, lands, and isles, as well as in our part of the world. For they who are towards the antarctic are directly feet opposite feet of them who dwell under the polar star; as well as we and they that dwell under us are feet opposite feet. For all parts of sea and land have their opposites, habitable or passable....
"They, therefore, that start from the west to go towards Jerusalem, as many days as they go upward to go thither, in so many days may they go from Jerusalem to other confines of the superficialities of the earth beyond. And when men go beyond that distance, towards India and to the foreign isles, they are proceeding on the roundness of the earth and the sea, under our country. And therefore hath it befallen many times of a thing that I have heard told when I was young, how a worthy man departed once from our country to go and discover the world; and so he passed India, and the isles beyond India, where are more than five thousand isles; and so long he went by sea and land, and so environed the world by many seasons, that he found an isle where he heard people speak his own language, calling an oxen in the plough such words as men speak to beasts in his own country, whereof he had great wonder, for he knew not how it might be. But I say that he had gone so long, by land and sea, that he had gone all round the earth; that he was come again to his own borders, if he would have passed forth till he had found his native country. But he turned again from thence, from whence he was come, and so he lost much painful labor, as himself said, a great while after, when he was coming home; for it befell after, that he went into Norway, and the tempest of the sea carried him to an isle; and when he was in that isle, he knew well that it was the isle where he had heard his own language spoken before, and the calling of the oxen at the plough. But it seems to simple and unlearned men that men may not go under the earth, but that they would fall from under towards the heaven. But that may not be any more than we fall towards heaven from the earth where we are; for from what part of the earth that men dwell, either above or beneath, it seems always to them that they go more right than any other people. And right as it seems to us that they be under us, so it seems to them that we are under them; for if a man might fall from the earth unto the firmament, by greater reason the earth and the sea, that are so great and so heavy, should fall to the firmament; but that may not be, and therefore saith our Lord God, 'He hangeth the earth upon nothing.'
"Although it be possible so to go all round the world, yet of a thousand persons not one might happen to return to his country; for, from the greatness of the earth and sea, men may go by a thousand different ways, that no one could be sure of returning exactly to the parts he came from, unless by chance or by the grace of God; for the earth is very large, and contains in roundness and circuit, above and beneath, 20,425 miles, after the opinion of the old wise astronomers; and, after my little wit, it seems to me, saving their reverence, that it is more; for I say thus: let there be imagined a figure that has a great compass; and about the point of the great compass, which is called the centre, let there be made another little compass; then, afterwards, let the great compass be divided by lines in many parts, and all the lines meet at the centre; so that in as many parts as the great compass shall be divided, in so many shall the little one that is about the centre be divided, although the spaces be less. Let the great compass be represented for the firmament, and the little compass for the earth; now the firmament is divided by astronomers into twelve signs, and every sign is divided into thirty degrees. Also let the earth be divided into as many parts as the firmament, and let every part answer to a degree of the firmament; and I know well that, after the authorities in astronomy, seven hundred furlongs of earth answer to a degree of the firmament, that is eighty-seven miles and four furlongs. Now, multiplied by three hundred and sixty times, it makes 31,500 miles, each of eight furlongs, according to miles of our country. So much hath the earth in circuit after my opinion and understanding."