See on this subject RITTER'S _Erdkunde_, vol.iv.p.

17.] Still in the infancy of geographical knowledge, and before Ceylon had been circumnavigated by Europeans, the mythical delusions of the Hindus were transmitted to the West, and the dimensions of the island were expanded till its southern extremity fell below the equator, and its breadth was prolonged till it touched alike on Africa and China.[1] [Footnote 1: GIBBON, ch.

xxiv.] The Greeks who, after the Indian conquests of Alexander, brought back the earliest accounts of the East, repeated them without material correction, and reported the island to be nearly twenty times its actual extent.

Onesicritus, a pilot of the expedition, assigned to it a magnitude of 5000 stadia, equal to 500 geographical miles.[1] Eratosthenes attempted to fix its position, but went so widely astray that his first (that is his most southern) parallel passed through it and the "Cinnamon Land," the _Regio Cinnamomifera_, on the east coast of Africa.[2] He placed Ceylon at the distance of seven days' sail from the south of India, and he too assigned to its western coast an extent of 5000 stadia.[3] Both those authorities are quoted by Strabo, who says that the size of Taprobane was not less than that of Britain.[4] [Footnote 1: STRABO, lib.v.Artemidorus (100 B.C.), quoted by Stephanus of Byzantium, gives to Ceylon a length of 7000 stadia and a breadth of 500.] [Footnote 2: STRABO, lib.ii.c.i.s.

14.] [Footnote 3: The text of Strabo showing this measure makes it in some places 8000 (Strabo, lib.