It May Appear Presumptuous As Well As Useless, After This Display Of The
Difficulties Attending The Question, To Offer Any New Conjecture; And Many
Of Our Renders May Deem It A Point Of Very Minor Importance, And Already
Discussed At Too Great Length.
It is obvious, from the detail into which we
have entered, that no country exists in the latitude which
Must be assigned
to it, whether we fix that latitude by Pytheas' statement of the distance
of Thule from the equator, or by the space sailed over in six days, the
productions of which at all agree with those mentioned by Pytheas. On the
other hand, we cannot suppose that his course was south-west, and not at
all to the north, which must have been the case, if the country at which he
arrived in sailing from the northern extremity of Britain, was Jutland. The
object must, therefore, be to find out a country the productions of which
correspond with those mentioned by Pytheas; for, with regard to those, he
could not be mistaken: and a country certainly not the least to the south
of the northern part of Britain. As it is impossible that he could have
reached the pole, what he states respecting the day and night being each
six months long must be rejected; and his other account of the length of
the day, deduced from his own observation of the sun, at the time of the
summer solstice, touching the northern point of the horizon, must be
received. If we suppose that this was the limit of the sun's course in that
direction (which, from his statement, must be inferred), this will give us
a length of day of about twenty hours, corresponding to about sixty-two
degrees of north latitude. The next point to be ascertained is the latitude
of his departure from the coast of Britain. There seems no good reason to
believe, what all the hypothesis we have examined assume, that Pytheas
sailed along the whole of the east coast of Britain: on the other hand, it
seems more likely, that having passed over from the coast of France to the
coast of Britain, he traced the latter to its most eastern point, that is,
the coast of Norfolk near Yarmouth; from which place, the coast taking a
sudden and great bend to the west, it is probable that Pytheas, whose
object evidently was to sail as far north as he could, would leave the
coast and stretch out into the open sea. Sailing on a north course, or
rather with a little inclination to the east of the north, would bring him
to the entrance of the Baltic. We have already conceived it probable that
the country he describes lay in the latitude of about 62 deg., and six days'
sail from the coast of Norfolk would bring him nearly into this latitude,
supposing he entered the Baltic. The next point relates to the productions
of the country: millet, wheat, and honey, are much more the characteristic
productions of the countries lying on the Gulf of Finland, than they are of
Jutland; and Pytheas' account of the climate also agrees better with the
climate of this part of the Baltic, than with that of Jutland.
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