of the earth.  Still, as a rule, the orthodox conception of the world was that of a circle enclosing a sort of T square, the east being placed at the top, Jerusalem in the centre; the Mediterranean Sea naturally divided the lower half of the circle, while the AEgean and Red Seas were regarded as spreading out right and left perpendicularly, thus dividing the top part of the world, or Asia, from the lower part, divided equally between Europe on the left and Africa on the right.  The size of the Mediterranean Sea, it will be seen, thus determined the dimensions of the three continents.  One of the chief errors to which this led was to cut off the whole of the south of Africa, which rendered it seemingly a short voyage round that continent on the way to India.  As we shall see, this error had important and favourable results on geographical discovery.

[Illustration:  GEOGRAPHICAL MONSTERS]

Another result of this conception of the world as a T within an O, was to expand Asia to an enormous extent; and as this was a part of the world which was less known to the monkish map-makers of the Middle Ages, they were obliged to fill out their ignorance by their imagination.  Hence they located in Asia all the legends which they had derived either from Biblical or classical sources.  Thus there was a conception, for which very little basis is to be found in the Bible, of two fierce nations named Gog and Magog, who would one day bring about the destruction of the civilised world.  These were located in what would have been Siberia, and it was thought that Alexander the Great had penned them in behind the Iron Mountains.  When the great Tartar invasion came in the thirteenth century, it was natural to suppose that these were no less than the Gog and Magog of legend.  So, too, the position of Paradise was fixed in the extreme east, or, in other words, at the top of mediaeval maps.  Then, again, some of the classical authorities, as Pliny and Solinus, had admitted into their geographical accounts legends of strange tribes of monstrous men, strangely different from normal humanity.  Among these may be mentioned the Sciapodes, or men whose feet were so large that when it was hot they could rest on their backs and lie in the shade.  There is a dim remembrance of these monstrosities in Shakespeare’s reference to

  “The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
   Do grow beneath their shoulders.”

In the mythical travels of Sir John Maundeville there are illustrations of these curious beings, one of which is here reproduced.  Other tracts of country were supposed to be inhabited by equally monstrous animals.  Illustrations of most of these were utilised to fill up the many vacant spaces in the mediaeval maps of Asia.