Colchos, upon the Black Sea, was believed to be an ocean-city; and here Greek fancy located the Palace of the Sun. It was here that the charioteer of the skies gave rest to his coursers during the night, and from whence in the morning he drove them forth again. Colchos, therefore, was Homer's eastern confine of the globe. On the north, Rhodope, or the Riphean Mountains, were supposed to enclose the hyperborean limits of the world. Beyond them dwelt a fabled race, seated in the recesses of their valleys and sheltered from the contests of the elements. They were represented as exempt from all ills, physical and moral, from sickness, the changes of the seasons, and even from death. A race directly the converse of the ideal hyperboreans were the Cimmerians, located at the mouth of the Sea of Azof, who are described by Homer as dwelling in perpetual darkness and never visited by the sun. He imagined the existence of numerous other nations, who long continued to hold a place in ancient geography. The Cyclops, who had but one eye, were placed in Sicily; the Arimaspians, similarly afflicted, inhabited the frontiers of India; the Pigmies, or Dwarfs, who fought pitched battles with the cranes, were supposed to dwell in Africa, in India, and, in fact, to occupy the whole southern border of the Earth. In the time of Homer, all voyages in which the mariner lost sight of land were considered as fraught with the extremest peril. No navigator ever visited Africa or Sicily from choice, but only when driven there by tempest and typhoon, and then his woes usually terminated in shipwreck: a return was not merely a marvel, but a miracle. Homer made Sicily the principal scene of the lamentable adventures of Ulysses, and sufficient traces are furnished by the Odyssey of the distorted and exaggerated notions entertained in the poet's time of the character of places reached by a voyage at sea. The existence of monsters of frightful form and size, such as Polyphemus, who watched for the destruction of the mariner and even roasted and devoured his quivering limbs; of treacherous enchantresses, such as Circe, who lured but to ensnare; of amiable goddesses, like Calypso, who offered immortality in exchange for love,--was doubtless believed by Homer, though we must make some allowance for poetical license. At any rate, the invention of these fables is not to be attributed to Homer, who, at the most, gave a highly-colored repetition of the terrific reports brought back from those formidable coasts by the few who had been fortunate enough to return. It was thus that an ideal and poetic character was communicated to the science of geography by the fables with which Homer tinged his narrative. In the early ages of the world, science and poetry were twin sisters: every poet was a savant, and every savant was a poet. [Illustration: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO HOMER.]