It is obvious that maps such as the Hereford one would be of no practical utility to travellers who desired to pass from one country to another; indeed, they were not intended for any such purpose.  Geography had ceased to be in any sense a practical science; it only ministered to men’s sense of wonder, and men studied it mainly in order to learn about the marvels of the world.  When William of Wykeham drew up his rules for the Fellows and Scholars of New College, Oxford, he directed them in the long winter evenings to occupy themselves with “singing, or reciting poetry, or with the chronicles of the different kingdoms, or with the wonders of the world.”  Hence almost all mediaeval maps are filled up with pictures of these wonders, which were the more necessary as so few people could read.  A curious survival of this custom lasted on in map-drawing almost to the beginning of this century, when the spare places in the ocean were adorned with pictures of sailing ships or spouting sea monsters.

When men desired to travel, they did not use such maps as these, but rather itineraries, or road-books, which did not profess to give the shape of the countries through which a traveller would pass, but only indicated the chief towns on the most-frequented roads.  This information was really derived from classical times, for the Roman emperors from time to time directed such road-books to be drawn up, and there still remains an almost complete itinerary of the Empire, known as the Peutinger Table, from the name of the German merchant who first drew the attention of the learned world to it.  A condensed reproduction is given on the following page, from which it will be seen that no attempt is made to give anything more than the roads and towns.  Unfortunately, the first section of the table, which started from Britain, has been mutilated, and we only get the Kentish coast.  These itineraries were specially useful, as the chief journeys of men were in the nature of pilgrimages; but these often included a sort of commercial travelling, pilgrims often combining business and religion on their journeys.  The chief information about Eastern Europe which reached the West was given by the succession of pilgrims who visited Palestine up to the time of the Crusades.  Our chief knowledge of the geography of Europe daring the five centuries between 500 and 1000 A.D. is given in the reports of successive pilgrims.

[Illustration:  THE PEUTINGER TABLE—­WESTERN PART.]

This period may be regarded as the Dark Age of geographical knowledge, during which wild conceptions like those contained in the Hereford map were substituted for the more accurate measurements of the ancients.  Curiously enough, almost down to the time of Columbus the learned kept to these conceptions, instead of modifying them by the extra knowledge gained during the second period of the Middle Ages, when travellers of all kinds obtained much fuller information of Asia, North Europe, and even, as, we shall see, of some parts of America.