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HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY.

THE science of Geography is, in its nature, confined nearly within the limits of actual discovery. It has, of course, kept pace with the progress of mankind in surveying the surface of the globe, and recording their observations. The following sketch of geographical discovery is compiled from Murray's Cyclopedia of Geography. No system of geography can be traced in the sacred writers, and the ancient Hebrews never attempted to form any scientific theory respecting the structure of the earth. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians made themselves acquainted not only with the shores of the Mediterranean, but with the coasts of Europe; and as early as the time of Solomon they sent their ships to the British Islands, which then bore the name of Tin Isles, from the tin obtained there. The first traces of Greek geography are found among its poets, whose brilliant fancy has spread its lustre over all the regions with which Greece ever held intercourse. Homer took the lead, and his high authority gave to the geography of the Greeks a poetical cast, which they transmitted to the nations whom they taught, and of which the traces are not entirely obliterated.

It is in Homer, that we find the first trace of the widely-prevalent idea, that the earth is a flat circle, begirt on every side by the ocean. This was indeed a natural idea in a region so entirely insular and peninsular, nowhere presenting, like Judea, a vast tract, stretching so far as to give the idea of immeasurable distance. The circular shape was suggested by that of the visible horizon; and, until science demonstrated the globular form of our planet, the very natural opinion prevailed, that the earth was a flat circle, with the vault of heaven above, darkness, and the abode of departed souls, beneath.

Homer, like Hesiod and the ancient poets generally, delights in topographical detail, and scarcely allows a city or natural object to pass without applying to it some characteristic epithet. It was only, however, within a very limited range, that he could give these distinct and animated notices. The Greek islands, beautiful and fertile spots, which seem to have been the first cradle of European civilization, were the central point from which his knowledge emanated. He knew well, and had probably visited, on one side, Peloponnesus, Attica, and the regions immediately adjoining; on the other, the western coast of Asia Minor, and the banks of the beautiful rivers by which it is watered. Perhaps scarcely any other tract on the globe presents within the same compass such a variety of grand and beautiful objects to rouse the imagination. Beyond this circuit, the world of Homer was soon involved in mysterious obscurity. Some grand and distant features, discernible through the gloom, were exaggerated and distorted by ignorance and superstition. Thebes, the mighty capital of Egypt, when that kingdom was in its greatest glory, is celebrated for its hundred gates, and the hosts of warriors which they sent forth to battle. Beyond lay the Ethiopians, deemed the remotest of men, dwelling on the furthest verge of the earth, and to whose distant confines Jupiter repaired to hold an annual festival. In the western part of the same continent the stupendous ridges of Atlas, had excited in Grecian fancy the image of a gigantic deified being, to whom was intrusted the support of the heavens. Even further to the west, the exploits and wanderings of the great Grecian demigod had conveyed a tradition of the strait leading into the ocean, and of the rocks on each

side, celebrated under the denomination of the Pillars of Hercules.

On the east, Colchos was distinguished by its early wealth and commerce; it was considered a city on the ocean, with which, therefore, the Black Sea must have been confounded; and being supposed to contain the palace of the Sun, where, during the night, he gave rest to his coursers, and whence in the morning he drove his chariot to its diurnal career, Colchos must have been regarded by Homer as placed on the most eastern verge of the earth. On the north, Rhodope, under the name of the Riphæan Mountains, was considered a chain of indefinite extent, closing in the northern limits of the world. The poet, however, had heard a vague report of the Scythians, under the description of a people subsisting on mare's milk. The vessels which conveyed the Grecian army to Troy were evidently little better than large boats; and all distant voyages, or those in which land was lost sight of, were considered as fraught with the extremest peril. A navigation to Africa or to Sicily took place only through tempest, terminating usually in shipwreck; and a return from these shores was esteemed almost miraculous. In regard to Sicily, indeed, Homer has largely communicated his ideas, having made it the theatre of the woes and wanderings of the hero of the Odyssey. Making every allowance for poetical license, we see evident traces of the terrified and excited state of mind in the navigators who returned from these shores. Monsters of strange form and magnitude, who watched for the destruction of the mariner, and even fed upon his quivering limbs; delusive sirens, who lured but to destroy; imprisonment under the transformed shape of wild beasts; these, probably, are only a highly-colored repetition of the terrific rumors brought by the few, whose bark had been wafted to those yet savage coasts.

The system of geography included in the great historical work of Herodotus is as complete as could be formed from the materials within his reach. It comprises a general summary of all that he could learn respecting the human race, and the regions which they inhabited. His information was obtained not solely or chiefly from books, but mostly by traveling, the only mode in which, at that era, geographical knowledge could be effectually collected. He assures us, that he had visited Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Thrace, Scythia, and all the distant regions which he describes. He viewed them, however, only as tracts of territory, the abode of men, and did not attempt to combine them into any system of the earth; nor did he possess, or, at least, apply any of the mathematical or astronomical principles of the Milesian school. He even derides some of its conclusions; as that of the earth being round and encompassed by the ocean. His strange statement, that the sun in India was vertical in the morning instead of at midday, is evidently a misunderstood report of what he had been informed respecting the difference of time in the different parts of the earth's circumference. His knowledge, however, such as it was, consisting of plain facts, untinctured with theory, was both solid and extensive.

The division of the earth into three quarters, or continents, was by this time completely formed.

We cannot minutely trace the progress of geographical science, through its slow gradations, down to the Middle Ages. The conquests of Alexander extended the knowledge of the Greeks, and those of the Romans enlarged the

field, till the largest portion of the three divisions of the Eastern Continent was generally known. Pliny, the most learned of the Roman writers, gives us a great variety of accurate details, amid a multitude of errors. Ptolemy, the last and greatest of ancient geographers, attempted a complete reform of the science, and showed an immense advance in knowledge, over his predecessors. In the Middle Ages the Arabs were the most learned of nations. Geography, among them, was studied with great ardor, and employed the pens of some of their ablest writers. Astronomy was among the favorite pursuits of the Court of Bagdad, under the Caliphs, and the knowledge then acquired was applied with some care and success to the improvement of geography.

In the Dark Ages there was little progress in geographical science. As yet the boundaries of even the Eastern Continent had not been defined; large portions of the interior had not been explored; vast seas and rivers were but partially known; the shape of the earth had not been ascertained; the continent of America and the Oceanic islands, were as yet undiscovered. But a new era was approaching. The Republics of Italy, and especially that of Venice, are the states in which a spirit of commerce and inquiry had arisen, and rapid advances were made in geographical knowledge. About this time Marco Polo, a noble Venetian, spent twenty-five years in traversing the remote parts of Asia. His narrative was soon translated into various languages, and spread over Europe. The discovery of America, by Columbus, soon followed. The progress of discovery over the globe, when the first steps had been taken, was astonishingly rapid; no cost. no peril, de. terred even private adventurers from equipping fleets, crossing the oceans, and facing the rage of savage nations in the remotest extremities of the earth. Before Columbus had seen the American continent, and the mouth of the Orinoco, Cabot, of Venetian descent, but sailing under English auspices, discovered Newfoundland, and coasted along the present territory of the United States, probably as far as Virginia. In the next two or three years, the Cortereals, a daring family of Portuguese navigators, began the long and vain search of a passage round the north of America; they sailed along the coast of Labrador, and entered the spacious inlet of Hudson's Bay, which they seem to have mistaken for the sea between Africa and America; but two of them unhappily perished. In 1501, Cabral, destined for India, struck unexpectedly on the coast of Brazil, which he claimed for Portugal. Amerigo Vespucci had sailed along a great part of Terra Firma and Guiana, and he now made two extensive voyages along the coast of Brazil; services which obtained for him the high honor of giving his name to the whole continent. Grijalva and Ojeda went round a great part of the circuit of the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico. In 1513, Nunez Balboa, crossing the narrow isthmus of Panama, beheld the boundless expanse of the Pacific Ocean. These discoveries afforded the impulse which prompted Cortez and Pizarro to engage in their adventurous and sanguinary career; in which, with a handful of daring followers, they subverted the extensive and populous empires of Mexico and Peru. Expeditions were soon pushed forward on one side to Chili, and on the other to California, and the regions to the north. Nearly a full view was thus obtained, both of the great interior breadth of America, and of that amazing range of coast which it presents to the southern ocean.

In the Eastern world, the domain which the papal grant had assigned to Portugal, discovery was alike rapid. Twenty years had not elapsed from the landing of Vasco da Gama, when Albuquerque, Almeida, Castro, Sequeira, Perez, and many others, as navigators or as conquerors, had explored all the coasts of Hindostan, those of Eastern Af rica, of Arabia, of Persia; had penetrated to Malacca and the Spice Islands; learned the existence of Siam and Pegu; and even attempted to enter the ports of China. But the characteristic jealousy of that power was soon awakened; the Portuguese embassy was not admitted into the presence of the emperor; and a mandate was issued, that none of the men with long beards and large eyes should enter the havens of the celestial empire. After all these discoveries, the grand achievement yet remained, of connecting together the ranges of eastern and western

discovery; and of laying open to the wondering eyes of mankind, that structure of the globe, which, though de monstrated by the astronomer, seemed to the generality of mankind contrary to the testimony of their senses.

Magellan, in 1520, undertook, by circumnavigating the earth, to solve this mighty problem; he passed through the straits which bear his name, and crossed the entire breadth of the Pacific. He himself was unhappily killed at the Philippine Islands, but his companions sailed on, and presented themselves to the astonished eyes of the Portuguese at the Moluccas. They arrived in Europe, after a voyage of three years; and it could no longer be doubted, by the most skeptical, that the earth was a spherical body.

We have seen how rapidly the Portuguese fleets explored all the southern coasts and islands. The eastern shores beyond Japan, as they presented nothing tempting to commercial avidity, were left to be examined by expeditions having science and curiosity for their object. This task was effected by Cook, Perouse, Broughton, and Krusenstern. Jesso, which had figured as a large continental tract, stretching between Asia and America, was reduced by them to its insular form and dimensions, and its separation from Saghalien established. The range of the Kurile islands was also traced; but some questions respecting this very remote and irregular coast remain yet to be solved. Along its northern boundary, beset by the almost perpetual ices of the polar sea, the progress of navigation was slow and laborious. The English and Dutch, the chief maritime states, made extraordinary efforts, and braved fearful disasters, in the hopeless attempt to effect, by this route, a nearer passage to India; but though they penetrated beyond Nova Zembla, they never could pass the formidable promontory of Severovostochnoi, the most northern point of the Asiatic continent. The Russians now claimed for themselves the task of advancing further. They had most rapidly discovered, and conquered the whole south and centre of Siberia, and reached the eastern ocean at Ochotzk; but the frozen bounds of the north for some time defied their investigation. Proceeding in little barks, however, they worked their way from promontory to promontory. Behring and Tchirikoff, early in the last century, sailed through the Northern Pacific, discovered the American coast, and the straits, bearing the name of the former, which divide Asia from America. Deschnew and Shalaurof, by rounding the Asiatic side of this Cape, and discovering the coast stretching away to the westward, were supposed to have established the fact of the entire separation of the two continents. There still remained a portion of coast on the side of Asia, which, it was alleged, might, by an immense circuit, have connected the two together; but the late voyage of Baron Wrangle seems to have removed every ground on which such conjecture could rest, and to have established beyond doubt or dispute, the existence of Asia and America as continents altogether distinct.

Respecting the interior of Asia, the British obtained much additional information from India, after they became undisputed masters of that region. This information was in many respects only a revival of ancient knowledge. The mountain boundary of India was traced, and found to rise. to a height before unsuspected. The sources and early courses of the Ganges and the Indus, were found in quarters quite different from those which modern geography had long assigned to them. The mountain territories of Cabul and Candahar, the vast sandy plains of Mekran, were illustrated by the missions of Elphinstone and Pottinger; while Turner and Moorcroft penetrated into the high interior table-land of Thibet. Recent and authentic information has also been furnished by Burnes respecting Bocharia and Samarcand, those celebrated capitals of the early masters of Asia; but there remains still a great central Terra Incognita, respecting which our information rests chiefly upon the desultory and somewhat clouded reports of Marco Polo, and the meagre narrative of Goez; though some important and more precise information has recently been afforded by the researches of Humboldt and Klaproth.

We can hardly trace the more modern advances in geographical knowledge, except so far as relates to Amer

ica and the islands of the Pacific. It may be proper to state, however, that within a few years, a vast amount of accurate information has been gained, in regard to countries in Africa, before unknown, or but partially explored. Many doubts have been solved which have puzzled the learned world for ages. In regard to Europe, almost every portion has now been examined, and its descriptive geography may be considered as accurately ascertained and defined.

More than half the surface of the globe, including long groups of islands and vast expanses of ocean, remained unexplored, even after regular naval routes had been formed round the Cape of Good Hope, and Cape Horn; yet there soon arose the belief of an Austral continent, as extensive, and as abounding in wealth, as that which had been discovered by Columbus.

The Portuguese, so long the most skilful and intrepid navigators of the ocean, appear to have been the first who threw any light upon this fifth and most remote portion of the earth; in less than twenty years after their passage of the Cape, they had reached the most extreme islands of the Oriental Archipelago, including Java and the Moluccas, and appear even to have observed some parts of the coast of New Guinea.

The Spaniards, during their early and adventurous career, made strenuous efforts to explore the southern seas; Magellan, as already observed, by his first circumnaviga tion of the globe, effected a grand step in geographical discovery. Alvaro Mendana, in 1563, sailed from Lima, and, after crossing the breadth of the Pacific, discovered a group of large maritime lands, to which, from a chimerical reference to Ophir, he gave the name of "Islands of Solomon;" they appear to be part of that great group which forms the outer range of Australasia. Mendana set out on a second voyage, and reached the same quarter, but, by some fatality, could not again find the islands for merly discovered. Quiros made a still more important expedition; he passed through the Polynesian group; and Sagitaria, one of the islands discovered by him, appears clearly identified with Otaheite; he terminated his voyage, like Mendana, among the exterior islands of Australasia; and with him expired the spirit of Spanish enterprise.

The Dutch, when they had expelled the Portuguese from Java and the Spice Islands, and had established in them the centre of their Indian dominion, were placed in such close proximity with New Holland, that it was scarcely possible for a great maritime nation to avoid extending their search to that region. Van Diemen, the Dutch governor of India about the middle of the 17th century, greatly promoted this object, and sent successive vessels to explore the coast of New Holland. Hertog, Carpenter, Nuytz, and Ulaming, made very extensive observations on the northern and western shores, but found them so dreary and unpromising, that no settlement of any description was ever attempted. Abel Tasman, however, went beyond his predecessors; he reached the southern extremity of this great mass of land, to which he gave the name of Van Diemen, without discovering it to be an island; he then sailed across, surveyed the western coast of New Zealand, and returned home by the Friendly Islands. This important range of discovery was not followed up; it refuted, however, the delineation by which New Holland had been made part of the imagined Austral continent. In the newly arranged charts, that continent still remained, but with its position shifted further to the south, and New Zealand probably contributing to form part of its fancied outline.

The English nation, by the voyages of several navigators, and particularly of Cook, secured the glory of fully exploring the depths of the great Pacific. The previous voyages of Byron, Wallis, and Carteret, had already made known some of the interesting groups of islands with which its vast surface is studded. Cook fully traced the great chains of the Society Islands, and of the Friendly Islands; he discovered and surveyed the eastern coasts of New Holland and Van Diemen's Land. He settled the form and relations of New Zealand, New Caledonia, and the other great Australasian lands and islands This side he passed thrice the Antarctic circle, and, ranging along the yet unvisited borders of the southern pole, solved, by e

futing, the famous modern hypothesis of an Austral continent. He navigated also through the northern Pacific, observed carefully the group of the Sandwich Islands, and established, in the manner before pointed out, the relation between the continents of Asia and America. Many eminent navigators, among the French, La Pérouse, Marchand, D'Entrecasteaux; among the Russians, Kotzebue, and Krusenstern; among the English, Vancouver and Beechy, followed; and, though the grand prizes of discov. ery had been carried off, found still some gleanings in so vast a field. The circumnavigation of the globe has ended in becoming a mere trading voyage, which conveys neither name nor glory to him by whom it is achieved. Captain Weddell, however, has lately, in New South Shetland, found a tract of land situated nearer to the Antarctic pole than any previously supposed to exist.

New Holland, much the most extensive of the lands belonging to the southern hemisphere, and rendered doubly interesting by its recent relations with Europe, has formed the theatre of late southern discoveries. Bass, in an open boat, found the strait which bears his name, separating New Holland from Van Diemen's Land, and making the latter a separate island. Baudin and Flinders, contemporaneously employed by the French and English nations, made a continuous survey of the vast circuit of its coasts, which had been before touched only at partial points. At a later period, Freycinet made some additional observa tions; and King found still a great extent of north and northwestern coast to survey for the first time. More recently, the discovery of Swan River and its shores, promises to redeem the reproach of sterility, which had been attached to the whole western coast of this continent; the interior on the eastern side also, though guarded by steep and lofty barriers, has been penetrated to a considerable depth, and found to contain extensive plains traversed by large rivers. Still the explored tracts form only a small proportion of the vast surface of this southern continent."

The idea, that America, at the north, tapered to a point, like South America, had prevailed for a long time after the discovery of the continent; and to discover the supposed passage at the north, became the object of European enterprise.

The English took the lead in this important career. Under the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Frobisher and Davis made each three successive voyages. One discovered the entrance into Hudson's Bay, the other found the entrance into the great sea which bears the name of Baffin's Bay; but, partly arrested by the well-known obstructions to which these seas are liable, partly diverted by a chimerical search after gold, they could not penetrate beyond the numerous islands and inlets by which these entrances are beset. Hudson, in 1610, steered a bolder course, and entered the vast bay, which has received its appellation from that great navigator, who there unfortunately terminated his adventurous career. The treachery of a ferocious and mutinous crew exposed him on these frozen and desolate shores, where he miserably perished. Sir Thomas Button followed in 1612, and finding himself in the middle of this capacious basin, imagined himself already in the Pacific, and stood full sail to the westward. To his utter dismay he came to the long, continuous line of shore which forms the western boundary of Hudson's Bay. He expressed his disappointment by giving to the coast the name of ' Hope checked.' Bylot and Baffin, who followed three years after, were stopped by the ice at Southampton Island. Baffin, however, made afterwards a more important voyage, in which he completely rounded the shores of that great sea which bears his name, and which, appearing to him to be inclosed on all sides by land, has been denominated Baffin's Bay. The error involved in this appellation deterred subsequent navigators from any further attempt; for Baffin, in passing the great opening of Lancaster sound, had concluded it to be merely a gulf. From that period the English navigators, though they ceased not to view this object with ardor, hoped to fulfil it only by the channel of Hudson's Bay. In 1631, two vessels were sent thither under Fox and James. The latter, entangled in some of the southern bays, returned after dreadful sufferings from the cold of the winter; but the former, quaintly calling himself Northwest Fox, explored a part of that great opening call

ed Sir Thomas Roe's Welcome, which appeared now to afford almost the only hope of a passage; but he stopped short at a point which he termed 'Fox's farthest.' Under Charles the Second, a company was formed for the purpose of settlement and commerce in Hudson's Bay, and engaged to make the most strenuous exertions to discover a western passage; but it is believed, that the only exertions really made by the Company tended to prevent any such discovery. Middleton, an officer in their service, was sent out in 1741, sailed up the Welcome, and believed himself to have discovered, that the head of that channel was completely closed. He was strongly charged with having received a high bribe from the Hudson's Bay Company to stifle the discovery, and Moor and Smith were sent out in the following year with the most sanguine hopes; but when they returned without having effected any thing, the public expectations were greatly abated. It became the general impression, that America, on this side, formed a mass of unbroken land, and that the long sought passage had no existence. New views of the extent and form of the northern extremities of America were opened by the discoveries of Cook, corroborated by those of some other English navigators in the Northern Pacific. It appeared that America there stretched away to the northwest, till it reached a breadth equal to one fourth part of the circumference of the globe. Cook penetrated, indeed, through the strait which bounds the continent and separates it from Asia; but the coast appeared there extending indefinitely north; and it became a general impression, that America formed a huge unbroken mass of land approaching the Pole, and perhaps reaching that ultimate point of the globe. This belief received a sudden shock from Hearne's voyage down the Copper Mine River, and his discovery of the sea into which it fell, in a latitude not higher than that of the north of Hudson's Bay. Soon after, Sir Alexander Mackenzie traced also to the sea another river twenty degrees further west. There was now a strong presumption, that a sea bounded the whole of America to the north, and that there really was such a passage as had been so long sought, and might be found, were it not too closely barred by ice and tempest. The British administration, animated with an active and laudable zeal in the cause of discovery, determined that no possible effort should be omitted by which this important and long agitated question might be brought to a final decision.

A series of exploratory voyages was now begun. Captain Ross, in 1818, made the circuit of Baffin's Bay, and returned with the belief, that no opening existed; Lieuten

ant Parry, second in command, formed a different judg ment, and, having satisfied the Admiralty as to his grounds of belief, was sent out with the command of a new expedition. In this memorable voyage, Captain Parry penetrated through Lancaster Sound, which he found to widen gradually, until it opened into the expanse of the Polar Sea. He did not touch on any part of the American coast, but found parallel to it a chain of large islands; and his progress through these was arrested, not by land, but by straits and channels encumbered with ice. In consideration of these obstacles, his next attempt was made through Hudson's Bay, by the yet imperfectly explored channel of the Welcome. Struggling through various obstacles, he reached at length a point considerably beyond that where Middleton had stopped, and found a strait opening from Hudson's Bay into the Polar Sea. This strait was, however, so narrow, and so completely blocked with ice, that there appeared no room to hope, that it would ever afford an open passage. Captain Parry was therefore again sent out in his first direction; but he made no material addition to his former discoveries. Meantime a land journey, under Captain Franklin, following in the footsteps of Hearne, reached the sea, and discovered a considerable extent of the hitherto unknown northern coast of the American continent. A tolerably clear glimpse was thus obtained of its extent and boundaries; and the zealous efforts of government were employed to verify the whole by actual survey. A second expedition under Captain Franklin extended this survey over three fourths of this boundary coast, and reached beyond the 149th degree of longitude. Meantime an expedition, under Captain Beechy, sent to meet Captain Franklin from the westward, passed the icy Cape of Cook, and arrived at nearly 1560 W. longitude; between which point and Captain Franklin's furthest limit there intervened only 7°, or 150 miles.

The belief was hence entertained, that the whole coast extended in a line not varying much from the 70th degree of latitude; but the important expedition which Captain Ross has just achieved through so many difficulties, proves the existence of a large peninsula, extending as far north as 74° N latitude. It remains still probable, that a naval passage may exist further north, in the line of Captain Parry's first voyage. But the encumbering ice is so thick, and so wedged into various straits and channels, that probably no vessel will ever be able even once to work its way through; and certainly a ship could never set out with any assurance of thus finding its way from the Atlantic into the Pacific.

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