ABSTRACT
Toward the end of the fourth century of the pre-Christian era, a colonial Greek navigator sailed from the port of Mas-silia (now Marseilles), his native city, through the Straits of Gibraltar, and thence up the coast of Spain and France and the British Isles to Ultima Thule, the designated end of the world. Possibly Thule was Iceland; it remains a matter of conjecture. The name of the enterprising sailor, Pytheas, has come down to us. He appears to the imagination, a solitary figure framed in light, as if a gate had swung open between the Pillars of Hercules toward the western world.
