The original ideas of the earth were naturally tinged by the prepossessions of each race, every one thinking his own country to be situated in the centre. Thus among the Hindoos, who lived near the equator, and among the Scandinavians, inhabiting regions nearer the pole, the same meaning attaches to the words by which they express their own country, _medpiama_ and _medgard_, both meaning the central habitation. Olympus among the Greeks was made the centre of the earth, and afterwards the temple of Delphi. For the Egyptians the central point was Thebes; for the Assyrians it was Babylon; for the Indians it was the mountain Mero; for the Hebrews Jerusalem. The Chinese always called their country the central empire. It was then the custom to denote the world by a large disc, surrounded on all sides by a marvellous and inaccessible ocean. At the extremities of the earth were placed imaginary regions and fortunate isles, inhabited by giants or pigmies. The vault of the sky was supposed to be supported by enormous mountains and mysterious columns. Numerous variations have been suggested on the earliest supposed form of the earth, which was, as we have seen in a former chapter, originally supposed to be an immense flat of infinite depth, and giving support to the heavens. As travels extended and geography began to be a science, it was remarked that an immense area of water circumscribed the solid earth by irregular boundaries--whence the idea of a universal ocean. When, however, it was perceived that the horizon at sea was always circular, it was supposed that the ocean was bounded, and the whole earth came to be represented as contained in a circle, beneath which were roots reaching downwards without end, but with no imagined support. [Illustration: FIG. 25.--THE EARTH FLOATING.] [Illustration: FIG. 26.--THE EARTH WITH ROOTS.] The Vedic priests asserted that the earth was supported on twelve columns, which they very ingeniously turned to their own account by asserting that these columns were supported by virtue of the sacrifices that were made to the gods, so that if these were not made the earth would collapse. [Illustration: FIG. 27.--THE EARTH OF THE VEDIC PRIESTS.] These pillars were invented in order to account for the passing of the sun beneath the earth after his setting, for which at first they were obliged to imagine a system of tunnels, which gradually became enlarged to the intervals between the pillars. The Hindoos made the hemispherical earth to be supported upon four elephants, and the four elephants to stand on the back of an immense tortoise, which itself floated on the surface of a universal ocean. We are not however to laugh at this as intended to be literal; the elephants symbolised, it may be, the four elements, or the four directions of the compass, and the tortoise was the symbol for strength and for eternity, which was also sometimes represented by a serpent. [Illustration: FIG. 28.--HINDOO EARTH.]