Fiftly, That Learning, Civility and Arts had their beginning in the East, it is not imputable either to the action of the Sun, or its Orientality, but the first plantation of Man in those parts, which unto _Europe_ do carry the respect of East. [SN: _Where the Ark rested as some think._] For on the mountains of _Ararat_, that is part of the hill _Taurus_, between the _East Indies_ and _Scythia_, as Sir _W. Raleigh_ accounts it, the Ark of _Noah_ rested; from the East they travelled that built the Tower of _Babel_: from thence they were dispersed and successively enlarged, and Learning, good Arts, and all Civility communicated. The progression whereof was very sensible; and if we consider the distance of time between the confusion of _Babel_, and the Civility of many parts now eminent therein, it travelled late and slowly into our quarters. For notwithstanding the learning of _Bardes_ and _Druides_ of elder times, he that shall peruse that work of _Tacitus de moribus Germanorum_, may easily discern how little Civility two thousand years had wrought upon that Nation: the like he may observe concerning our selves, from the same Author in the life of _Agricola_, and more directly from _Strabo_; who to the dishonour of our Predecessors, and the disparagement of those that glory in the Antiquity of their Ancestors, affirmeth the _Britains_ were so simple, that though they abounded in Milk, they had not the Artifice of Cheese. Lastly, That the Globe it self is by Cosmographers divided into East and West, accounting from the first Meridian, it doth not establish this conceit. For that division is not naturally founded, but artificially set down, and by agreement; as the aptest terms to define or commensurate the longitude of places. Thus the ancient Cosmographers do place the division of the East and Western Hemisphere, that is the first term of longitude in the Canary or fortunate Islands; conceiving these parts the extreamest habitations Westward: But the Moderns have altered that term, and translated it unto the Azores or Islands of St. _Michael_; and that upon a plausible conceit of the small or insensible variation of the Compass in those parts, wherein nevertheless, and though upon second invention, they proceed upon a common and no appropriate foundation; for even in that Meridian farther North or South the Compass observably varieth; and there are also other places wherein it varieth not, as _Alphonso_ and _Rodoriges de Lago_ will have it about _Capo de las Agullas_ in _Africa_; as _Maurolycus_ affirmeth in the shore of _Peleponesus_ in _Europe_: and as _Gilbertus_ averreth, in the midst of great regions, in most parts of the earth. CHAPTER VIII Of the River _Nilus_.