ignorant men as you, who have never been beyond their own island, can imagine that the sun shines for their country alone.'
Then the master of an Egyptian vessel, who was present, spoke in his turn.
'No,' said he, 'you also are wrong. The sun is not a Deity, and does not move only round India and its golden mountain. I have sailed much on the Black Sea, and along the coasts of Arabia, and have been to Madagascar and to the Philippines. The sun lights the whole earth, and not India alone. It does not circle round one mountain, but rises far in the East, beyond the Isles of Japan, and sets far, far away in the West, beyond the islands of England. That is why the Japanese call their country "Nippon," that is, "the birth of the sun." I know this well, for I have myself seen much, and heard more from my grandfather, who sailed to the very ends of the sea.'
He would have gone on, but an English sailor from our ship interrupted him.
'There is no country,' he said, 'where people know so much about the sun's movements as in England. The sun, as every one in England knows, rises nowhere and sets nowhere. It is always moving round the earth. We can be sure of this for we have just been round the world ourselves, and nowhere knocked up against the sun. Wherever we went, the sun showed itself in the morning and hid itself at night, just as it does here.'
And the Englishman took a stick and, drawing circles on the sand, tried to explain how the sun moves in the heavens and goes round the world. But he was unable to explain it clearly, and pointing to the ship's pilot said:
'This man knows more about it than I do. He can explain it properly.'
The pilot, who was an intelligent man, had listened in silence to the talk till he was asked to speak. Now every one turned to him, and he said:
'You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the earth,
