American Indians might have been further developed, but the Spanish conquest put a stop to all progress, and for a consecutive history of the map and map-making we must turn to the Old World, and trace this history from Egypt and Babylon, through Greece, to our own age. The ancient Egyptians were famed as "geometers," and as early as the days of Rameses II. (Sesostris of the Greeks, 1333-1300 B.C.) there had been made a cadastral survey of the country showing the rows of pillars which separated the nomens as well as the boundaries of landed estates. It was upon a map based upon such a source that Eratosthenes (276-196 B.C.) measured the distance between Syene and Alexandria which he required for his determination of the length of a degree. Ptolemy, who had access to the treasures of the famous library of Alexandria was able, no doubt, to utilize these cadastral plans when compiling his _geography_. It should be noted that he places Syene only two degrees to the east of Alexandria instead of three degrees, the actual meridian distance between the two places; a difference which would result from an error of only 7° is the orientation of the map used by Ptolemy. Scarcely any specimens of ancient Egyptian cartography have survived. In the Turin Museum are preserved two papyri with rough drawings of gold mines established by Sesostris in the Nubian Desert.[11] These drawings have been commented upon by S. Birch, F. Chabas, R. J. Lauth and other Egyptologists, and have been referred to as the two most ancient maps in existence. They can, however, hardly be described as maps, while in age they are surpassed by several cartographical clay tablets discovered in Babylonia. On another papyrus in the same museum is depicted the victorious return of Seti I. (1366-1333) from Syria, showing the road from Pelusium to Heroopolis, the canal from the Nile with crocodiles, and a lake (mod. Lake Timsah) with fish in it. Apollonius of Rhodes who succeeded Eratosthenes as chief librarian at Alexandria (196 B.C.) reports in his _Argonautica_ (iv. 279) that the inhabitants of Colchis whom, like Herodotus (ii., 104) he looks upon as the descendants of Egyptian colonists, preserved, as heirlooms, certain graven tablets ([Greek: kurbeis]) on which land and sea, roads and towns were accurately indicated.[12] Eustathius (since 1160 archbishop of Thessalonica) in his commentary on Dionysius Periegetes, mentions route-maps which Sesostris caused to be prepared, while Strabo (i., 1. 5) dwells at length upon the wealth of geographical documents to be found in the library of Alexandria. A cadastral survey for purposes of taxation was already at work in Babylonia in the age of Sargon of Akkad, 3800 B.C. In the British Museum may be seen a series of clay tablets, circular in shape and dating back to 2300 or 2100 B.C., which contain surveys of lands. One of these depicts in a rough way lower Babylonia encircled by a "salt water river," Oceanus.