The effect of thus forcing Yenikalè and Gibraltar to meet, naturally enough brings the Faro of Messina and the Bosphorus near to one another: and hence Circe, in the Twelfth Book, names them to Ulysses as alternative routes, both apparently lying in the same region. But again I say, that in order to comprehend the Outer or imaginary geography of the Odyssey, we must entirely dismiss from our minds the map of Europe as it is. We must treat as having been a real map to Homer only the little sphere which was embraced within the resort of ordinary Greek navigation. Beyond that narrow range, we must consider him as distributing land and sea in the manner he best could, by the aid of reports, necessarily in that age most indistinct, and in all likelihood exaggerated, and even wilfully darkened to boot, by trading craft. Sometimes therefore he puts a people upon poetical _terra firma_ at points, where it fortunately but accidentally turns out that nature has provided an antitype for the imagery of the Poem. Sometimes he lodges them where there is none; _ubi nîl nisi pontus et aer_. But though details are to be thus disposed of, still the one master variation from actual nature is this; the sea extended from the Mediterranean to the Euxine, behind, i. e. to the north of, the Bosphorus and of Thrace. This gives us that open passage into the Euxine, by which Homer supposed Ulysses to have reached the maritime region, that Jason had sought and found through the Bosphorus. In sum; it is too plain to require much of the detailed proof which I have tried to give, that Homer believed in a great expanse of waters lying somewhere to the north. The probability is, that from some Phœnician source he had heard rumours of the great German Ocean. It need not to us appear strange that his mind did not readily conceive an extent of land like that of the continent of Europe, when we notice that his experience made him conversant partly with islands, partly with countries in minute subdivisions, and of small breadth from sea to sea. This great imaginary mass of waters he included within the θάλασσα, to which everything belonged as far as the point where the great River Oceanus was reached. I think then that we have now found the two keys to the Outer Geography, 1. In the sea-route north of Thrace; 2. In the amalgamation of the western with the north-eastern report of the Ocean-mouth.