The orthodox faith confined the habitable world to one temperate zone, and represented the earth as an oblong surface, four hundred days' journey in length, two hundred in breadth, encompassed by the ocean, and covered by the solid crystal of the firmament.

[77] [Footnote 73: See Procopius, Persic.

(l.ii.c.

20.) Cosmas affords some interesting knowledge of the port and inscription of Adulis, (Topograph.
Christ.l.ii.p.138, 140--143,) and of the trade of the Axumites along the African coast of Barbaria or Zingi, (p.

138, 139,) and as far as Taprobane, (l.xi.p.