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pears from the shasters themselves, that they claim a much higher antiquity than this; instances of which are recited by Mr. Halhed. The doctrine of transmigration is one of the distinguish ing tenets of the Gentoos. It is their opinion, according to Mr. Holwell, that those souls which have attained to a certain degree of purity, either by the innocence of their manners or the severity of their mortifications, are removed to regions of happiness proportioned to their respective merits; but that those who cannot so far surmount the prevalence of bad examples, and the powerful degeneracy of the times, as to deserve such a promotion, are condemned to undergo continual punishment, in the animation of successive animal forms, until, at the stated period, another renovation of the four jogues shall commence, upon the dissolution of the present. They imagine six different spheres above this earth; the highest of which, called suttee, is the residence of Brhima or Brahma, and his particular favorites. This sphere is also the habitation of those men who never uttered a falsehood, and of those women who have voluntarily burned themselves with their husbands; which practice is expressly enjoined in the code of the Gentoo laws. This code, printed by the East India Company in 1776, is a very curious collection of Hindoo jurisprudence, which was selected from curious originals in the Sanscrit language, by the most experienced pundits, or lawyers; who were employed for this purpose from May 1773 to February 1775; afterwards translated into the Persian, and then into English, by Mr. Halhed. The institutes contained in this collection are interwoven with the religion of the Gentoos, and revered as of the highest authority. The curious reader will discover an astonishing similarity between the institutes of this code and many of the ordinances of the Jewish law; between the character of the brahmins or priests, and the Levites; and between the ceremony of the scape goat under the Mosaic dispensation, and a Gentoo ceremony called the ashummed jug, in which a horse answers the purpose of the goat. Many obsolete customs and usages, alluded to in many parts of the Old Testament, may also receive il lustration from the institutes of this code. It appears from the code, that the brahmins, who are the priests and legislators of the country, have resigned all the secular and executive power into the hands of another cast or tribe; and no brahmin has been properly capable of the magistracy since the time of the suttee jogue. The only privilege of importance which they have appropriated to themselves, is an exemption from all capital punishment: they may be degraded, branded, imprisoned for life, or sent into perpetual exile; but it is every where expressly ordained, that a brahmin shall not be put to death on any account whatsoever. The four great and original tribes into which the Gentoos are divided, according to their theology, proceed from the four different members of Brahma, the supposed immediate agent of the creation under the spirit of the Almighty. These tribes are, 1. The Brahmins, which proceeded from the mouth, and whose office is to pray, read, and instruct: 2. The Chehteree, which proceeded from his arms,

whose office is to draw the bow, to fight, and to govern: 3. The Bice, which proceeded from his belly or thighs, who are to provide the necessaries of life by agriculture and traffic: and, 4, The sooder, from his feet, which are ordained to labor, serve, and travel. Few Christians, says the translator of the Gentoo code, have expressed themselves with a more becoming reverence of the grand and impartial designs of Providence, in all his works, or with a more extensive charity towards all their fellow creatures of every profession, than the Gentoos. It is indeed an article of faith among the brahmins, that God's all merciful power would not have permitted such a number of different religions, if he had not found a pleasure in beholding their varieties.

GENUFLECTION, n. s. Lat. genu, the knee, and flecto, to bend. The act of kneeling; adoration expressed thereby.

wax-candles, incense, oblations, prayers only excepted. Here use all the rites of adoration, genuflections, Stilling fleet.

his Onomasticon, has been a very ancient custom GENUFLECTION, says the Jesuit Rosweyd in in the church, even under the Old Testament dispensation; and was observed throughout the year, excepting on Sundays, and from Easter to Whitsuntide, when kneeling was forbidden by the council of Nice. Others have shown, that the custom of not kneeling on Sundays had obtained from the time of the Apostles, as appears from St. Irenæus, and Tertullian; and the Ethi opic church, scrupulously attached to the andivine service. The Russians esteem it an indecient ceremonies still retains that of kneeling at Jews usually prayed standing. Rosweyd gives cent posture to worship God on the knees. The the reasons of the prohibition of genuflexion on Sundays, &c., from St. Basil, Anastasius, St. Justin, &c.

GENUINE, adj.
GENUINELY, adv.
rated, impure, or mixed.
GENUINENESS, n. s.

Lat. genuinus. True; real; opposed to whatever is false, adulte

Experiments were at one time tried with genuine materials, and at another time with sophisticated ones. Boyle.

bodies less violently, more genuinely, and more uniThere is another agent able to analize compound versally than the fire.

Id.

A sudden darkness covers all;
True genuine night: night added to the groves.
Dryden.

The stream of pure and genuine love
Derives its current from above;
And earth a second Eden shows,
Where'er the healing water flows.

Cowper.

GENUS, n. s. Lat. A scientific term to designate a class of being which comprehends many species: thus quadruped is a genus including almost all terrestrial beasts.

If minerals are not convertible into another species, though of the same genus, much less can they be surmised reducible into a species of another genus.

it

Harvey on Consumptions.

is one con.mon A general idea is called by the schools genus, and nature agreeing to several other common natures: so animal is a genus, because it agrees to horse, lion, whale, and butterfly. Watts.

GENUS is also used for a character or manner applicable to every thing of a certain nature or condition in which sense it serves to make divisions in divers sciences, as medicine, natural history, &c.

GENUS, in medicine. See MEDICINE. GENUS, in metaphysics and logic, denotes a number of beings which agree in certain general properties common to them all; so that a genus is nothing else but an abstract idea, expressed by some general name or term. See LAGIC and METAPHYSICS.

GENUS, in natural history, a subdivision of any class or order of natural beings, whether of the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms, all agreeing in certain common characters. See BOTANY and ZOOLOGY.

GENUS, in rhetoric. Authors distinguish the art of rhetoric, as well as orations or discourses produced thereby into three genera, demonstrative, deliberative, and judiciary. To the demonstrative kind belong panegyrics, genethliacons, epithalamiums, funeral harangues, &c. To the deliberative, persuasions, dissuasions, commendations, &c. To the judiciary, accusations and defences.

GEOCENTRICK, adj. Fr. geocentrique; Gr. yn the earth, and civroov. Applied to a planet or crb having the earth for its centre, or the same centre with the earth.

GEODESIA, n. s. ? Gr. 7ewdaiola. A term GEODETICAL, adj. S that has been sometimes applied to that part of geometry which contains the doctrine of measuring surfaces, and finding the contents of all plain figures.

GEOFFRÆEA. See GEOFFROEA. GEOFFREY, of Monmouth, bishop of St. Asaph, called by our ancient biographers Gallofridus Monumetensis. Leland conjectures that he was educated in a Benedictine convent at Monmouth, where he was born; and that he became a monk of that order. Bale, and after him Pits, call him archdeacon of Monmouth; and it is generally asserted, that he was made bishop of St. Asaph, in 1151 or 1152 in the reign of king Stephen. His history was probably finished after 1138. It contains a

fabulous account of British kings, from Brutus the grandson of Eneas the Trojan to Cadwallader in 690. But Geoffrey, though we may blame his credulity, was not the inventor of the legen dary history. It is a translation from a MS. written in the British language, and brought to England from Armorica by his friend Gualter, archdeacon of Oxford. But the achievements of king Arthur, Merlin's prophecies, and many speeches and letters, were chiefly his own additions.

GEOFFROY (Stephen Francis), M. D., a celebrated French physician, botanist, and chemist, born in Paris, in 1672. After having finished his studies he travelled into England, Holland, and Italy. In 1704 he received the degree of M. D. at Paris; and at length became professor of chemistry, and physician of the Royal College. He was F. R. S. of London, and of the Academy of Sciences. He wrote several very curious theses in Latin, which were afterwards translated into French; and a treatise entitled Tractatus de Materiâ Medicâ, sive de Medicamentorum Simplicium, Historia, Virtute, Delectu, et Usu. He died in Paris, in 1731.

GEOFFROEA, or GEOFFROYA, in botany, a genus of the decandria order, and diadelphia class of plants; natural order thirty-second, papilionacea: CAL. quinquefid, the fruit an oval plum, the kernel compressed. Species three, the principal is,

G. inermis, the cabbage-bark tree, a native of Brasil and Jamaica. The wood is used in building; but it is chiefly valued for its bark, which is administered as an anthelmintic medicine. From this medical property it is also called the worm-bark tree. This bark is of a gray color externally, but black and furrowed on the inside. It has a mucilaginous and sweetish taste, and a disagreeable smell. It is given in cases of worms, in form of powder, decoction, syrup, and extract. The decoction is preferred, and is made by slowly boiling an ounce of the fresh dried bark in a quart of water, till it assume the color of Madeira wine. This sweetness is the syrup; evaporated, it forms an

extract.

GEOGRAPHY.

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Minerva lets Ulysses into the knowledge of his country; she geographically describes it to him.

Broome on the Odyssey. GEOGRAPHY, as a science, embraces, together with a description of the earth itself, and its physical peculiarities, the consideration of all its great political and statistical divisions: the latter being sometimes detailed in systems; sometimes, as in gazetteers, alphabetically. It has its own history as a science, and it is intimately connected with all history.

As we regard society in its earlier stages, and the progenitors of mankind gradually peopling the earth, the materials of this science accumulate. The progress of the wanderers becomes bounded by this formidable mountain range, or that mighty ocean barrier: nations, and even races of men, are discriminated by the direction of the

greater rivers of the world, and their access to them; while their political and intellectual character, and even their moral and religious habits, are affected by the extent of their migrations, the intercourse they maintain with their parent tribes and with each other, and the climate in which they finally settle. When history becomes more important, the name and description of each groupe of human abodes are still more interesting.

As the circle of civilisation spreads and enlarges, the knowledge of distant regions becomes at once more exact and more widely diffused. Whether we trace its enlargement cn a greater or less scale, as conducted by the emigration or extended dominion of the more enlightened tribes, or as connected with the enterprise and restlessness of individuals, man appears designed to multiply his accommodations by exchanging the varied advantages and productions of every part of the earth: and he either becomes, with his extended knowledge of them, more contented with his existing allotment on its surface, or stimulated to seek out for himself a better.

If even we contemplate the march of conquest, and the actual foundation which it has supplied of the existing political arrangements of the world, geographical information will be often found to have invited the successful expedition -always to have attended it. Ignorance, in fact, of the horrors of a northern winter, will appear to have providentially hastened the downfal of a modern Alexander; while Alexander of Macedon will be seen to have added greatly to our knowledge of the earth, by including some of the ablest of ancient geographers in his suite; charged with the duty of making observations on both the coasts and the interior of the provinces through which he passed. In their journals, it is well known, we find to this day some of the oldest and most important land-marks between the real and fabulous geography of Asia.

We propose to call the attention of our readers in this article to I. A History of the Progress of Geographical Discovery from the earliest periods. II. The Physical and Political Geography of the Globe. III. A Sketch of Technical or Artificial Geography.

PART I.

OF THE PROGRESS OF GEOGRAPHICAL DIS

COVERY.

This will be found conveniently divided into the History of Ancient and Modern Geography; that is, the progress of this science as known to the ancient world, or until the period of the first Portuguese voyages; and its important and rapid advances since that period. The geography of the middle ages has no distinctive characters that require in this place particular consideration

SECT. I.-OF ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY. Some portions of geographical knowledge are. found amongst the most uncivilised tribes; but it is local, and confined to their own immediate haunts, or wild and visionary, associated with innumerable superstitions. The geography of the most ancient nations was long and necessarily of the

former character: it was limited by the sphere of their own wants and their own experience. As mankind settled themselves in permanent abodes they had more time to become speculative about distant regions; as they spread themselves on the surface of the earth they acquired a real knowledge of its productions and peculiarities. It is easy to perceive how rapidly this kind of knowledge would thus be generated amongst men, considered as a whole, and that it would of necessity, as amongst the most useful, be found amongst the earliest of their acquirements: but mankind never long remained as a whole; there were the same means of geographical as of many other kinds of knowledge in the ancient, as in the modern world, but the difficulties of communicating and therefore of perfecting it were great, and the methods of perpetuating it few and very partially cultivated.

The antediluvian geography is altogether a matter of sacred history; for, while all nations retain traditions of the flood and its consequences, in the writings of Moses only have we any consistent account of either: to the few traces, therefore, of this the earliest dawn' of the science, preserved in those writings, we may at once refer the reader. It chiefly involves two or three curious questions of biblical criticism, such as the locality of Eden, the site of Ararat, &c.

Both before and after the flood the longevity of man was favorable to the diffusion and transmission of this and every other kind of knowledge; but the dispersion of mankind, according to the most approved construction of Gen. xi., would more than counterbalance this: they were now compulsorily the dependent and pilgrim beings they were so unwilling to acknowledge themselves; and, thinly peopling large districts, would soon lose the remembrance of a common origin. It is worthy of remark, however, that near the plains of Shinar, where Moses fixes the scene of their early attempt to settle themselves, and the point of their dispersion, the two earliest empires, Assyria and Babylon, were established; and a more central spot, from which all the countries first inhabited could be reached (including even China) cannot be found upon the earth.

The Egyptians are the earliest settled people of whose internal polity we have any account. Some writers have supposed that Misraim, which Moses informs us was its ancient name, is a word of dual termination, derived from Maser, a fortress; and consider it to designate the two Egypts, Upper and Lower. This is conjectural enough; but in the time of Abraham, 1920 years before the Christian era and above 1000 prior to the birth of Herodotus the father of Grecian history, we learn from the pentateuch that Egypt was a monarchy, under a king of the name of Pharaoh; under tillage, perhaps, or a corn country, and therefore a resort in famine and after the lapse of about 200 years we find it under the same form of government, rich and well cultivated; possessing an established priesthood, whatever were their pretensions, who had a considerable landed property; and that the rest of

the lands were held in fee simple, as we should say, by the private occupiers. It had also a class of men styled in our translation 'physicians.' Its monarch was surrounded by a court and appointed officers. We read also of his chariots; and of waggons, vestures of fine linen, rings, gold chains, silver cups, and other traces of civilisation and opulence among the people.

The Phoenicians, less favored in regard to the soil of their country, are the first people of whose maritime expeditions we have any consistent account; their situation on the shores of the Mediterranean familiarised them to the sea; and so early as 600 years after the deluge, the navigation and commerce of Sidon (one of their cities) had acquired a celebrity that the patriarch Jacob mentions at the moment of his death, Gen. xlix. 13. At a later period these merchants founded colonies in Africa, Spain, and other countries of the Mediterranean; and even extended their navigation beyond the Pillars of Hercules into the ocean. It seems also certain that they navigated the Indian seas; for the ships of Hiram are said to have brought gold to Solomon from Ophir, which is generally thought to have been situated on the western side of that peninsula. They seem, indeed, to have been the early carriers of all civilised nations, and to have been as careful to conceal their discoveries as possible, that they might retain this monopoly.

We now come to the earliest traces of geographical knowledge among the Greeks. Homer, in the eighteenth book of the Iliad, describes the shield of Achilles as representing the cosmography of the age, and on it the earth is figured as surrounded by the sea, or rather by a large river, the sources of which Hesiod afterwards placed near the pillars of Hercules. The disk included the Mediterranean much contracted on the west, the Egean and part of the Euxine seas, so that Greece is the centre of Homer's world. On the west, the geography of the poet did not extend beyond the kingdom of Ulysses, comprehending the isles of Same, Zacynthus, and some others, with a part of the neighbouring continent: beyond this his know ledge was vague and confined, and the strait which separates Sicily from Italy may be considered as the vestibule of his fabulous world; where the floating rocks, the howling of the monster Scylla, and the terrific Charybdis, all demonstrate that we are in the regions of romance.

Sicily, though known to Homer by its appropriate name of Thinacia (afterwards Thrinacra), is also peopled with wonders. Here he places the flocks of the sun guarded by nymphs; the Cyclops, and the Lestrygones Anthropophagi. In following the poet west of Sicily, we find ourselves in the regions of pure fable, amongst the enchanted isles of Circe and Calypso, and the floating domains of Eolus. It is, indeed, evident that Homer must have been almost totally ignorant of the geography of the Mediterranean, west of Sicily; for he makes Ulysses go from the Isle of Circe to the entrance of the ocean in one day, and allows him only the same time to return from the Isle of the Enchantress to the Strait of Sicily.

Following the poet to the north-east, we find

him in like manner gradually immerging into the regions of fable. After passing through the Hellespont, &c., into the Euxine, he mentions the Halizones, a people possibly inhabiting the banks of the Halys, beyond whom are the Amazons, a nation of female warriors, to whose country succeeds the kingdom of Colchis, near the circumference of the disk, on which the poet places the palace of the sun, and the theatre of the amours of Apollo, with a daughter of the

ocean.

The geography of Homer to the south-east is more rational: we find him acquainted with the whole west coast of Asia Minor; and not entirely ignorant of the country of the Phoenicians, whose purple stuffs, gold and silver works, naval science, avidity, and cunning, afford him the subjects of several strains; nor of Egypt, whose river he knew by the name of Egyptos, and of whose inhabitants he praises the medical skill. Between Egypt and the Pillars of Hercules the distance is much shortened, and is occupied by a country named Lybia, where, says the poet, the lambs are born with horns, and the sheep bring forth three times a-year.'

Above the earth, according to Homer, was a solid vault or firmament, under which the sun and moon performed their daily journeys in chariots rolling on the clouds. In the morning the luminary of day arose from the bosom of the eastern ocean, and in the evening sunk in the western; a golden vessel, the workmanship of Vulcan, during the night, transported him back by the north to the east. Beneath the earth the poet also placed a vault, named Tartarus corresponding with the firmament, where, in eternal night, dwelt the Titans, the enemies of the gods. Hesiod even determines the height of the firmament, and the depth of the gulf of darkness; an anvil, says he, would be nine days falling from the heavens to the earth, and as many descending from the earth to the bottom of Tartarus.

On the west, Homer's world was terminated by two fabulous countries. Near the sources of the ocean, and not far from the dismal caves of the dead, were the Cimmerians, an unhappy people, immersed in eternal darkness; beyond them in the ocean, and, consequently, according to the poet, beyond the limits of the earth and the empire of the winds and seasons, is Elysium; where neither tempests nor winter are ever felt, where the soft zephyr continually murmurs, and where the elect of Jupiter, snatched from the common lot of mortals, enjoy eternal felicity. Beyond this happy region, the earth was enveloped by an indefinite chaos; 'a confused mixture of existence and nothing; a' gulf, where all the elements of heaven and Tartarus, of the earth and the ocean, were confounded; a gulf, dreaded by the gods themselves.'

Near the unhappy Cimmerians, and the ever blessed inhabitants of Elysium, Hesiod places the Macrobians, a people of large stature, adorned with all the virtues, and whose lives were prolonged to 1000 years at least; the nectar of flowers was their food, and the dew of heaven their beverage.' In the same neighbourhood this poet places the Arimaspes, a very clear

sighted people though with but one eye; and the Griphons or guardians of the precious metals in the Riphaan mountains. As the geography of the west was extended, all these marvellous people were transferred onwards; the Cimmeans to Asia Minor and Germany, where two people were found with names somewhat similar, inhabiting the shores of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, and the Cimbrick Chersonesus. The Hyperboreans, another fabulous people of the Greeks, were successively transferred to an island which corresponds with Great Britain, and to the northern extremities of the earth, where they were made to inhabit a very agreeable country, explained by the days and nights being each six months long, or by the momentary proximity of the sun, when, according to the ideas of Homer, he passes during the night by the northern ocean to return to his palace in

the east.

In the age of Homer indeed the Greeks were so little skilled in navigation, that the most trifling voyage was considered an heroic enterprise. Thus Menelaus employed eight years in visiting the Isle of Cyprus, Phoenicia, Egypt, and Lybia; and none but pirates ventured, he tells us, at the risk of their lives, to steer direct from Crete to Lybia.

The ancient and famous voyage of the Argonauts is founded on the Homeric cosmography. Jason and his companions, according to Hesiod, passing from the Mediterranean by the Euxine and Phasis into the Eastern Ocean, were prevented from returning by the same route, in consequence of the fleet of Colchis blockading the Bosphorus, and were obliged to make the circuit of the coast of the Ethiopians, and to cross Lybia by land, drawing their vessels with them. After a journey of four days, in this manner, they arrived at the gulf of Syrtis in the Mediterranean. Other ancient writers conduct the Argonauts back by the Nile, which they supposed to communicate with the Eastern Ocean, while later ones endeavour to reconcile the ancient tradition with the discoveries of their own times, and make them take a route by the Palus Mæotis and Tanais into the northern ocean, and round the supposed northern limits of the earth, by the west to the Strait of Hercules, by which they again enter the Mediterranean. Finally, when the non-existence of the communication between the Palus Mæotis and the northern ocean was proved, the Argonauts were supposed to have ascended the Danube; a branch of which was thought to empty itself into the Adriatic.

These vague geographical traditions were gradually, however, exploded by the foreign wars of the Greeks, and by the growing spirit of ambition, which obliged or induced a portion of them to seek new countries, and new sources of riches and power. The Milesians and Megarians formed commercial establishments on the Euxine. The Corinthians colonised Sicily, while the Phocæans, flying from oppression, settled in Sardinia, in Corsica, and in Gaul, where they founded Marseilles. Coleus, a Samian, driven out of his course by a tempest, passed the Strait of Hercules, and navigated the

Atlantic. After visiting Tartessus, the Peru of these ages (probably a portion of the South of Spain), he returned to Greece with such riches as awakened the enterprise of other adventurers. The Phoenicians in vain attempted to check the navigation of the Greeks; the latter, on the contrary, appear to have procured some of the charts of that people, and Anaximander, a Milesian, first published a map of the world. He, however, compared the earth to a cylinder, Leucippus to a drum, Heraclitus to a boat, while others gave it a cubic form, and Xenophon and Anaximenes are said to have thought it a vast mountain whose base extended to infinity, and which the heavenly bodies illuminated by revolving round it.

Herodotus now, however, challenges the praise of narrating only what he saw himself or learned from ocular witnesses. He visited in the course of his long voyages and journeys the Greek colonies of the Euxine from the Bosphorus to the Phasis, but he adheres to the Homeric system in many respects. He describes the world as divided into three parts; but Europe separated, according to him, from Asia, by the rivers Phasis and Araxes and by the Caspian Sea, he supposes larger than Asia and Lybia taken together. He believes that a fleet sent by Darius circumnavigated Asia from the Indus to the confines of Egypt, while, with regard to Africa, he was unacquainted with any point between Carthage and the Pillars of Hercules. On the east coast, he was well acquainted with the shores of the Arabian Gulf, but makes this continent terminate considerably north of the equator. He has also preserved to us the traditionary relation of a voyage of the Phoenicians round Africa. With respect to the North of Europe, he knew that the Phonican colony of Gadez received tin and amber from these regions, but could not fix the position of the Cassiterides, whence came the first of these objects, and was yet more ignorant of the country where they obtained the second.

A voyage of Hanno, prince of the Carthaginians, the descendants of the Phoenicians, was performed about the time of Herodotus. He sailed from Carthage to found colonies on the coast of Lybia, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, with a fleet of sixty vessels, each rowed by fifty oars, and escorting a convoy with 30,000 persons of both sexes. Some geographers limit the extent of Hanno's navigation on the coast of Africa to Cape Nun, others extend it to Cape Three points on the coast of Guinea. Major Rennell terminates it near Sierra Leone.

Hamilcar, in the same century, after a voyage of four months to the North, arrived at the isles Oystrymnides, probably Scilly, and on the coast of Albion. It seems also probable, that the Carthaginians had even before this discovered the Canaries. Aristotle speaks of an island, the beauty of which had drawn to it in his time such numbers of the Carthaginians, that the senate forbade any further emigration thither, on pain of death; and Diodorus mentions a similar discovery of them.

These ideas of a fertile distant island of the ocean, Plato found circulating in Egypt, and,

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