Ringmere

Hist. Brit. (6) 5. 250. Of unknown situation. Milton depends on Florence of Worcester, a.d. 1010. Riphaean Mountains. 1 Defens. (5) 6. 99; Moscovia (1) 8. 473. The Riphaean Mountains were considered by the Greeks the northern limit of the world and fabulous tales were told of them. (Aristotle, Meteorology 1. 13.) We read in Virgil: Mundus ut ad Scythiam Riphaeasque arduus arces Consurgit. {Georg. 1. 240-L) The geographical writers {e. g., Mela 1. 19) placed these mountains in the unknown north, beyond babarous Scythia, and made The confidence of travelers them the source of the Tanais (Don). of the sixteenth century in the ancient geographers is shown by the attempt of Chancellor to discover these mountains in Ru ia. He says, in a pa age partly quoted by Milton: “Touching the Riphean mountaines, whereupon the snow lieth continually, and where hence in times past it was thought that Tanais the river did spring, and that the rest of the wonders of nature, which the Grecians fained and invented of olde, were there to be scene: our men which lately came from thence neither sawe them, nor yet have brought home any perfect relation of them, although they remained there for the space of three moneths, and had gotten in that time some intelligence The whole Countrey is plaine of the language of Moscovie. and champion, and few hills in it.” (Hak. 1. 248.) In 1 Dejens. Milton uses the Riphaean Mountains in connection with the Arctic Ocean to indicate a remote and uncivilized land. Virgil uses them in much the same way: Solus Hyper boreas glacies Tanaimque nivalem Arvaque Rhipaeis numquam viduata pruinis ch242.xhtml l 259