Nile were accounted for by the marshes and Mountains of the Moon.

[Footnote 8: Rejecting the old idea of an encircling ocean as the girdle
or limit of the known world, and replacing it with a new fancy of
unbounded continent (on all sides except the north-west)--a fancy which
the vast extension of Roman Dominion under the Empire may have
fostered.]

Thus all the problems of ancient geography were explained: where
Ptolemy's knowledge failed him altogether, no Western of that time had
ever been, or was likely to go. The whole realised and unrealised world
was described with such clearness and consistency, men thought, that
what was lacking in Aristotle was now supplied.

Yet it is worth while observing how, centuries before Ptolemy, in the
ages nearer to Aristotle himself, the geography of Eratosthenes and
Strabo, by a more balanced use of knowledge and by a greater restraint
of fancy, had composed a far more reliable chart.[9]

[Footnote 9: In using the expressions "Chart," or "Map" of Strabo's
description (_c._ A.D. 20), it is not meant to imply that Strabo himself
left more than a written description from which a plan was afterwards
prepared: "The world according to Strabo." The same applies to
Eratosthenes (_c._ B.C. 200) and all pre-Ptolemaic Greek geographers.
Ptolemy's Atlas, probably, and the Peutinger Table, more certainly, are
maps really drawn by ancient designers; but these are the only ones that
have survived from a much larger number.]

This earlier and discredited map avoided all the more serious
perversions of Ptolemy. Africa was cut off at the limit of actual