[321] Cosmas, as will be seen in the cut, adhered to the continental theory, placing Paradise on the continent in the east. Paradise was more commonly placed in an island east of Asia.
[322] It has been suggested by M. Beauvois that Labrador may in the same way derive its name from Inis Labrada, or the Island of Labraid, which figures in an ancient Celtic romance. The conjecture has only the phonetic resemblance to recommend it. Beauvois, L’Elysée transatlantique (Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, vii. (1883), p. 291, n. 3).
[323] Gaffarel, P., Les isles fantastiques de l’Atlantique au moyen âge, 3.
[324] Coryat’s Crudities, London, 1611. Sig. h(4), verso.
[325] The result of the Arabian measurements gave 56⅔3 miles to a degree. Arabian miles were meant, and as these contain, according to Peschel (Geschichte der Geographie, p. 134) 4,000 ells of 540.7mm., the degree equalled 122,558.6m. The Europeans, however, thought that Roman miles were meant, and so got but 83,866.6m. to a degree.
[326] Edrisi, Geography, Climate, iv., § 1, Jaubert’s translation, Paris, 1836, ii. 26.
[327] Found in various Celtic MSS. See Beauvois, L’Eden occidentale (Rev. de l’Hist. des Relig.), viii. (1884), 706, etc.; Joyce, Old Celtic Romances, 112-176.
[328] These alleged voyages are considered in the next chapter.
[329] Polybius, Hist., iii. 38.
[330] The tract On the World (περὶ κόσμου, de mundo), and the Strange Stories (περὶθαυμασίων ἀκουσμάτν, de mirabilibus auscultationibus), printed with the works of Aristotle, are held to be spurious by critics: the former, which gives a good summary of the oceanic theory of the distribution of land and water (ch. 3), is considerably later in date; the latter is a compilation made from Aristotle and other writers. Muellenhof has sought partially to analyze it in his Deutsche Alterthumskunde, i. 426, etc.