Before the days of Marinus of Tyre and Ptolemy the limits of geographical knowledge were again much extended both southward and eastward. The Ptolemaic map depicts a wealth of detail in the interior of Africa, although we are unable to say with assurance what most of this detail represents in reality.[174] Ptolemy certainly had some knowledge of the great lakes and mountains of east-central Africa. The snow-covered mountains which he placed at the sources of the Nile may be associated with reports derived from the east coast of Africa, of Kenya, Kilimanjaro, or possibly the Ruwenzori range.[175] Farther to the west he describes a river, the Nigir, flowing from a region south of the country of the Garamantes (probably modern Fezzan) to the westward into a lake near the Atlantic. It seems altogether likely that by this river he meant the Niger. Ptolemy mentions two expeditions that had been made at an unknown period to the south from the land of the Garamantes, one under Septimius Flaccus, who arrived at the country of the Ethiopians after three months’ journey, and the other under Julius Maternus and the king of the Garamantes, a four months’ journey to a country called Agisymba, abounding in rhinoceroses. Ptolemy’s regional knowledge certainly extended as far south as the equator, and he was well aware of the fact that the equatorial zone is inhabited. In the east, also, the Ptolemaic map reveals an advance in knowledge over its predecessors. Chryse appears as a peninsula, and other islands and coasts are shown that certainly indicate familiarity with the Malay Peninsula and China, possibly also with Borneo and Java. We shall find, however, that these valuable extensions of knowledge eastward and southward were universally lost sight of in the West in the Middle Ages and that cosmographers were united in placing India or Paradise as the farthest end of the world in the one direction and either the shores of the Ethiopian Ocean immediately beyond the Garamantes or the edge of the uninhabitable zone at the tropic or not far beyond it, as the extreme limit in the other.[176] CHAPTER II THE CONTRIBUTION OF WESTERN CHRISTENDOM BEFORE 1100 A. D. _INTRODUCTION_ The geographical lore of antiquity was carried over to the Western Europe of the Crusading age by the Christians of the first eleven centuries of our era and by the Moslems. In this chapter we shall study the manner in which it was transmitted, transformed, and augmented by Christian agencies. SCRIPTURAL INFLUENCE ON EARLY MEDIEVAL GEOGRAPHY