He is the first author, however, who mentions the seven mouths
of the Ganges. The route to the Seres, which he describes, has been already
noticed: it is remarkable that the latitude which he assigns to his Sera
metropolis, is within little more than a degree of the latitude of Pekin,
which, in the opinion of Dr. Vincent, is one of the most illustrious
approximations to truth that ancient geography affords. His description of
Arabia is, on the whole, accurate; he has, however, greatly diminished the
extent of the Arabian Gulf, and by at the same time increasing the size of
the Persian, he has necessarily given an erroneous form to this part of
Asia. The ancient opinion of Herodotus, that the Caspian was a sea by
itself, unconnected with any other, which was overlooked or disbelieved by
Strabo, Arrian, &c. was adopted by Ptolemy, but he erroneously describes it
as if its greatest length was from east to west. The peninsula to which he
gives the name of the Golden Chersonesus, and which is probably Malacca, he
describes as stretching from north to south: to the east of it he places a
great bay, and in the most distant part of it the station of Catigara.
Beyond this, he asserts that the earth is utterly unknown, and that the
land bends from this to the west, till it joins the promontory of Prasum in
Africa, at which place this quarter of the world terminated to the south.
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