clothing them in his own poetic language, creates his celebrated Atlantic Island, 'the most beautiful and fertile country of the universe, producing abundance of corn and fruits of the most exquisite flavor; containing immense forests, vast pastures, mines of various metals, hot and mineral springs, in short, every thing necessary to the wants or pleasures of life. Its political government was admirable, being governed by ten sovereigns, all descended from Neptune, and who, though independent of each other, all lived in harmony; its commerce was flourishing, and it contained several large cities with a great number of towns and rich and populous villages. Its ports were crowded with foreign vessels, and its arsenals filled with materials for the construction and equipment of fleets. Neptune, who was the father, legislator, and god of the Atlantides, had here a temple a stade in length, covered with silver and ivory, and which contained a golden statue of the god, the height of the temple. The descendants of Neptune reigned over the island 9000 years, and extended their conquests over all Lybia to Egypt, and over Europe to Tyrrhenia, their incursions even extending to Greece, but here they were repelled by the Athenians. At length this warlike nation, after having rendered its name celebrated throughout the world, suddenly disappeared, an inundation, caused by an earthquake, submerging the whole island in a night and a day.'

About the time of the Peloponnesian war, Scylax collected the itineraries of the navigators of his time, and what has been preserved of the collection contains the coasts of the Palus Mæotis, the Euxine, the Archipelago, the Adriatic, and all the Mediterranean, with the west coast of Africa as far as the isle of Cerné of Hanno, or Fedalle, according to Gosselin. Beyond this, says the Greek, the sea is not navigable on account of the thick herbs with which it is covered.

Half a century after, Eudoxus of Cnide first applied geographical observations to astronomy; and Aristotle inferred about the same time the sphericity of the earth from the observations of travellers, that the stars seen in Greece were not visible in Cyprus or Egypt. The same philosopher supposed the coasts of Spain not very distant from those of India; and describes the habitable earth as a great oval island surrounded by the ocean, terminated on the west by the river Tartessus, (probably the Guadalquivir), on the east by the Indus, and on the north by Albion

and Ierne.

Nearly in the century after Aristotle (B. C. 344) the voyage of Pytheas took place, respecting which great diversity of opinion exists amongst geographers. He is said to have departed from Marseilles, coasted Spain, France, and the east side of Britain, to its northern extremity; whence, still continuing his course to the north, after six days' navigation he arrived at a land called Thule, the situation of which is a great object of discussion: the most probable conjecture is that it is a part of the coast of Jutland.

We have intimated how important was the

expedition of Alexander to the progress of this science. As well as the direct services performed by his suite, we owe to him our knowledge of the books previously buried in the archives of Babylon and Tyre, which were now by his order transferred to the city to which he gave his name; and thus the astronomical and hydrographical observations of the Phoenicians and Chaldeans became accessible to the Greeks.

Commercial enterprise soon after stimulated the Greeks to further exertion: the Marsellais, endeavouring to follow the route of Pytheas, visited the north; and Euthymenes, in a voyage along the west coast of Africa, arrived at a large river, probably the Senegal, which he described as similar to the Nile. At about the same period the Greek kings of Egypt caused a trade to be opened with India from the ports of Berenice and Myoshormos on the Red Sea; and Ptolemy Philadelphus sent geographers into Asia. In the same reign Timosthenes published a description of the known sea-ports, and a work on the measure of the earth. The navigation of the Indian seas, however, was at this time very imperfect; the Greek fleets continuing to creep along the shores as far as the Indus, but having their chief intercourse with the coasts of Ethiopia and Arabia Felix: the monsoons appear indeed to have been entirely unknown to them.

Hipparchus, it would seem, had some notions of India beyond the Ganges. He attempted to reduce geography to astronomical and mathematical bases; but, having few celestial observations, his map of the world is filled with erroneous hypotheses. He was the first who conceived the notion of a southern continent uniting Africa and India. Eudoxus of Cyzicus first suggested the possibility of sailing round Africa by the south. Strabo relates, after Possidonius, the grounds on which that navigator made this conjecture, and the voyage in which he found the prow of a ship, which came from the west, in returning towards the Arabian Gulf from India. But he never seems himself to have completed a voyage in that direction.

Polybius was the first Roman writer whose contributions to geographical science are of any importance. He himself examined the coast of Africa as far as Mount Atlas, and first ventured to think that the torrid zone might be habitable.

Strabo, at the commencement of the Christian era, formed a complete system of geography. He first describes Iberia (Spain), with the coasts of which he seems pretty well acquainted. Near them he places the Cassiterides or Isles of Tin, which according to one part of his writings, are north of the port of Artabres (Corunna), according to another parallel with Britain. For all the geographers of this period made Britain a triangular island, of which the southern point was but little distant from the northern coast of Spain. The Cassiterides were therefore evidently the Scilly Islands, long the Carthaginian point of refreshment in their visits to Britain for tin.

Straho was not so well acquainted with the coast of Gaul, and still less with Albion and

'erne; the latter he says is reported to be altogether sterile and inhabited only by Anthropophagi. This is the last country of his geography towards the north, and, as he disbelieved the voyage of Pytheas, the continent of Europe terminated with him at the Elbe.

This writer was also but imperfectly acquainted with the north coast of Africa; for he makes the distance between Sicily and the pillars of Hercules only 13,000 stades. On the west coast his map is limited to about Cape Roxo, for he seems to have been unacquainted with Hanno's voyage, and on the east coast his knowledge did not extend, it would seem, beyond Cape Bandellans, his Noti Cornu or southern Horn. Thus the coasts of Africa were unknown beyond the latitude of 12° N. Strabo places at the southwest extremity the Ethiopes Etherii, and at the south-east the region of Cinnamon. Between these extremes he admits but a small space, which the great heat had prevented being visited, and this extremity of Africa he supposed to be washed by the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, which here met: an opinion which maintained its ground against the idea of India and Africa being united, until the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope. Eastward the details of Strabo's geography seem only to have included the mouth of the Indus; though he had some conjectural knowledge of Taprobana (Ceylon), derived from the Greek expeditions to this neighbourhood.

It is only in the later years of the Roman republic that we find any accurate description of the Canaries amongst that people. This was given by Statius Sebosus; who collected at Gadez all the particulars which Sestorius and others who had previously fled from Rome thither had transmitted into Spain; and they now received the name of the Fortunate Islands.

In the first century of the Christian era appeared the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, a work which marks distinctly the progress of discovery at this time on the coasts of Africa and India. The Noti Cornu of Strabo, no longer bounded the voyages undertaken along the eastern shores of the former continent, but they were extended to the port of Rapta and the isle of Menutias, corresponding with Bandel Velho and the island of Magadoxca. Beyond Rapta however, says the writer, the ocean is entirely unknown, but is believed to continue its western direction, and after having washed the south coast of Ethiopia to join the western ocean.' The Periplus gives a description of the west coast of India from the Indus to Ceylon, and mentions a part of the coast between Bombay and Goa as infested with pirates. The east coast of the Indian Peninsula is less accurately traced. India beyond the Ganges was known to the author of the Periplus only by report. This work however mentions the monsoon of these seas.

Great Britain seems to have been first ascertained to have been an island by the Roman fleet sailing round its north extremity, in the reign of Vespasian. Ireland also became at this period better known from the intercourse of the Imperial armies with the Britons. The Roman armies in the same century are thought to have reached the shores of the Baltic through Ger

many: they named this the Sarmatic Sea. The Cimbric Chersonesus of Ptolemy is evidently the Danish peninsula; the Codanus Sirius of Pliny, the Cattegat; and the isles of Scandiæ, east of the Chersonesus, the larger Danish isles and perhaps the coast of Schonen. The Nerigon of Pliny is probably a part of the southern coast of Norway.

Pliny, indeed, considers the Ganges as the north-eastern limit of Asia, from which he supposed the coasts to turn to the north and to be washed by the sea of Serica, between which and the pretended strait communicating from the Caspian Sea to the Scythian or Northern Ocean he admits but a small space: hence he supposes it possible, that some Indians might have been driven in a storm from their own coasts to those of Germany. In the system of Pliny, it therefore follows, that the ocean occupies the vast spaces of Siberia, Mogul, Tartary, China, &c.

Ptolemy's knowledge of the east coast of Africa was bounded on the south by the promontory of Pracum (Brava), and by the bay of Gonzales de Cintro on the west. He thought that to the south of this bay the coast of Africa, after first forming a gulf which he names Hespericus, extended indefinitely between the east and south to India. On the coast of that country beyond the Ganges he places a great gulf, now supposed to be the bight of Martaban, which on the east bounded the Golden Chersonesus; the Thinæ of this writer was the boundary of classical geography in this direction.

a

Two remarkable specimens remain of Roman itineraries. The first is that of Antoninus, containing merely, like our common road books, the names of the different places, and their distance from each other. The other, the Peutingerian Table, is of later origin, and professes to exhibit map of the world. This is twenty one feet in length, and one foot broad. Every feature in fact, is increased immeasurably in one direction, and diminished as much in the other: the Mediterranean and Black Seas appear like rivers, rolling an amazing length; while the three continents are narrow strips of land through which they flow. In the longitudinal measures the space from Babylon to the Eastern Ocean occupies only one-eighth of the map, though it fills nearly half the space represented. In fact, the only object of this production appears to have been to exhibit the great roads leading from east to west through the Roman empire; and every other purpose of a map was sacrificed, if indeed at all contemplated, to this.

On the decline of the Roman empire, geography, with every other species of scientific knowledge, was committed, in the Christian nations, to the custody of monks and ecclesiastics. The only original work of cosmography that appeared between the second and sixth centuries, or rather the only one that has come down to us, is that of Cosmas, an Egyptian monk, who wrote about the latter period. He conceived of the earth as a vast square plain, surrounded by a wall which supported the vault of the firmament; and the succession of day and night as the effect of a great mountain placed to the north of the earth, behind which the sun conceals himself

every night. This system, differing only from that of Homer in the square figure of the earth; was adopted by many Christian writers of the middle ages.

The earth, in a chart constructed in 787, is represented as a circular planisphere, composed of three unequal portions; and beyond Africa to the south, there is said to be a fourth, which the extreme heat of the sun prevents us from visiting, and on the confines of which are the fabulous antipodes.

The followers of Mahomet, however, cultivated astronomy and geography more successfully. In the ninth century the Arabian navigators had visited China, Sumatra, Java, and other islands of the Malay archipelago, while on the eastern coast of Africa their religion was established from the Red Sea to cape Corientes. Edrisi, however, who composed a treatise on geography in 1153, seems to have been ignorant of the union of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans; for he depicts a large country extending from the coast of Africa to India beyond the Ganges. The navigation of the Arabs on the west coast of Africa does not appear to have extended beyond Cape Blanco; but they speak of an apocryphal voyage of discovery to the west, which at the best seems only to have extended to the Canary Isles.

All the Arabian geographers adopted the ancient idea of the earth being every where bounded by an ocean: one of them curiously enough compares it to an egg floating in water. Abulfeda, after Eratosthenes, describes the sea as terminating Africa immediately on the other side of the mountains of the moon. But their information respecting the Niger is the most curious. This they describe as the Nile of the Negroes, every where bordered by opulent states, and flowing from east to west into the sea.

Their countrymen, it is to be observed, had at this time subdued all Egypt and the northern coast of Africa, held by their descendants the Moors to this day. Hence by means of the caravans, which penetrated Africa then as now, their information on the subject of its interior geography was not so far behind ours as the distance of time would teach us to expect. Their arms, on the other hand, at the period of which we are speaking, had not yet penetrated up the Nile into Nubia; therefore all that tract of country, with Abyssinia, is described by them in a very confused manner. In Asia they occupied Persia, Cabul, Bukharia, and all the finest provinces of Hindostan. Thus they acquired very extensive opportunities of becoming acquainted both with the interior and eastern extremities of that continent. The provinces of Khowarezm and Bukharia are described in narratives, which form still our chief authority for the interior of those countries. India was divided into two parts, Sind and Hind, the former comprehending the western, and the other the eastern part of that vast region. Of the peninsula of the Decan, scarcely any thing was known except the coast of Malabar, considered as forming part of Sind, and along which the Arabs had sailed as far as Cape Comorin. Their Seranda is evidently the Indian name for Ceylon, and their Lamery is

marked, by its productions of camphor, dyeingwood, gold, ivory, &c. to be Sumatra ; Java also is mentioned under the name of Al-Djavah. These geographers also knew that the Spice Islands were situated somewhere in this region. In Eastern Asia, Thibet is designated under the appellations of Tobbat or Alboton, and China under those of Cathay, and Tchin or Sin; the former denoting the northern, and the latter the southern provinces of that empire. Indeed all the regions, known to us as India beyond the Ganges, seem by them to have been comprehended under the name of Sin. But the northern extremity of Asia was a portion of the continent little known to these writers.

Perhaps we should not omit to notice, that they chiefly regarded it as the terrific abode of Gog and Magog, two enormous giants, who gradually retreated before the march of discovery. At this period their castle was seriously described as surrounded with walls of iron cemented with brass, and towers to the skies. Towards its base was a gate fifty cubits high, also of iron, and secured by enormous bolts and bars. The people belonging to these chieftains appear to have comprehended all those which extended to the north and north-east of Asia. Those of Magog, the most remote, are described as of small stature.

The Norwegians, about A. D. 860, discovered the Faroe Islands and Iceland. In the conclusion of the same century Othæ made a voyage from Norway to Biarma (the Dwina), or the White Sea, which is the first time we hear of the North Cape of Lapland being doubled.

In 952 an Icelandic nobleman devoted a period of exile from his country to voyages of discovery: and, having heard that land had been seen far to the west, he directed his course that way, and arrived at a verdant shore, to which he gave the name of Groen or Greenland, and which was shortly after colonised by the Icelanders and Norwegians.

Biorn, an Icelander, in 1001, sailing from Norway to Greenland, was driven upwards of 1000 miles to the south-west, where he discovered a country, to which, on a second visit, he gave the name of Winland, from the wild grapes he saw there. Five years after its discovery the Norman Greenlanders formed a colony in this country; and in 1121 Greenland sent a bishop hither to convert the pagan colonists; but from this period Winland becomes lost to the world; many modern geographers think it to be Newfoundland.

Important additions were made to the geography of Asia in the thirteenth century by Marco Paulo, a Venetian of noble birth. He penetrated by land to China, about 1270, and describes it in detail from his own observation. Of Japan he speaks from the accounts of others: but he visited the coast of Tsionpa, notices Great and Little Java, which seem to be Borneo and Sumatra, and the isles Necaurau and Angana, in the Bay of Bengal (Naucauvery, one of the Nicobars, and Andaman), the inhabitants of which, according to him, were anthropophagi, with the heads of dogs! India he describes throughout the east and west

coasts of the peninsula, between the Ganges and the Indus: but, on the east of Africa, his know ledge extended no farther than Zanguebar and the opposite part of Madagascar which he first made known.

ECT. II.-OF MODERN GEOGRAPHY. The invention of the mariner's compass is the important connecting link between ancient and modern geography. The first person who availed himself of it is said to have been a friar and astronomer of Oxford, Nicholas Lynn, who steered to the northern isles of Europe with the new guide, A. D. 1360.

But the Portuguese have the merit of leading the way in that more extended career of maritime enterprise which has distinguished modern times. Early in the fifteenth century, in one of their voyages to the coast of Africa, Puerto Sancto, or the Holy Haven, the least of the Madeiras, was discovered; in 1432 another of their navigators was driven on the Azores, which were at first supposed to be to the easternmost of Marco Paulo's oriental islands. It was not, however, until 1471 that the equator was crossed, and the islands in the gulf of Guinea discovered. In 2484 they arrived at the river Zaire; and bere the country was taken formal possession of for the king of Portugal, by virtue of a papal bull, obtained in 1432, from Alexander IV., an instrument which granted the full sovereignty and property of the countries of the Infidels discovered by his subjects, to that prince.

At length, the terrors of the torrid zone being gradually dissipated, a fleet was fitted out under Bartholemew Diaz for the express purpose of attempting the passage to India by the south of Africa. This cominander coasted Africa to within sight of its southern point, to which he gave the name of Cabo de Todos los Tormientos, from the violent storms he experienced off it; but the want of provisions obliged him to return to Lisbon and it was not until ten years afterwards (20th November, 1497) that Vasco de Gama had the honor of doubling the promontory. He now passed along the eastern coasts of Africa, through the Mosambique channel to Melinda, and arrived at Calicut six months afterwards

:

In the interim Columbus (see our article AMERICA) had performed his first three voyages. Vaso Nunez, in 1513, first obtained a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean from the mountains of Darien, and gave it the absurd name of the South Sea; and two years afterwards the coast of South America had been explored to the southern tropic.

Between 1510 and 1515 the Portuguese had visited all the islands of the Malay archipelago to the Moluccas. But a discovery greater than any hitherto made was reserved for the Spaniards. In 1519 Magellan discovered and passed the straits which still bear his name: after which, sailing north-west across the Grand Ocean for three months and twenty days without seeing land, he fell in with an island in fifteen degrees south, and shortly after with another in nine degrees, to which he gave the name of Dosaventurados, or Unfortunate, from their

affording him neither water ncr refreshments, when his crew were perishing with famine. From these islands, the situation of which is not exactly known, steering still to the north-west, he arrived at the group which he named the Ladrones, or islands of thieves, from the dishonest disposition of the natives; and thence directing his course to the west, on the Saturday of Passion Week he discovered what he called the Archipelago of St. Lazarus, but which were subsequently named the Philippines. The first of this archipelago that Magellan touched at was Cebu, with whose king he took part in a war against his neighbours, and was killed in an invasion. The squadron sailed thence to Borneo and the Moluccas; discovered Timor; and, after many disasters, one vessel only, the Victoria, the Admiral's ship, returned to Spain, round the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Seville the 7th September 1522. This being the first ship that circumnavigated the globe, she was in great triumph drawn up into the city of Seville, and long preserved tnere. Her commander, Sebastian Cano, was ennobled, and received orders to wear for his coat of arms, a terrestrial globe, with the motto Primus circumdedisti me.' On their return to Spain the companions of Magellan were not a little surprised on being the first to realize the well-known problem of losing a day in sailing round the world westerly.

The progress of discovery was now rapid: the Portuguese would appear to have reached New Guinea, and even New Holland, between 1530 and 1540. Passing over minor discoveries of the Spaniards in the Pacific, in 1577 we find our own countryman, Drake, first conspicuous in this noble career. He obtained a commission from queen Elizabeth, by virtue of which he equipped a squadron of five vessels, the largest only 100 tons and the smallest fifteen, with a complement of 104 persons. With this small force he sailed from Plymouth the 15th of November, 1577, entered the Strait of Magellan the 20th of August the next year, and cleared it the 6th of September: an extraordinarily short passage, for no navigator since has been able to accomplish it in less than thirtysix days. Having coasted the whole continent to the north extremity of Mexico, and being laden with the spoils of the enemy, he determined to seek a northern passage into the Atlantic. In this pursuit he sailed along the coast to which, from its cliffs, he gave the name of New Albion, and took possession of it in the usual form for England. At Cape Blanco he found the cold so great, that he gave up the search of a passage by the north, and crossed the Pacific to the Molucca Islands, in which long route his only discoveries were some islands in twenty degrees north, which have not been since identified: and, after an absence of 1501 days, arrived at Plymouth, the 3d of November, with only his own ship and fifty-seven men.

Drake was followed by Cavendish, Schouten, Quiros, Dampier, and other celebrated navigators, who each touched that numerous archipelago which stretches across the Pacific at different points. Meanwhile Cabot having discovered Newfoundland, Cortereal, a Portuguese navigator, followed him to the north of Hudson's

Bay, to which he gave the name of the strait of Anian, and to the country that of Tierra de Labrador. It was now concluded that India might be reached in this direction; and a large extent of the north-west coast of America was explored by the Spaniards from California. The attempt to find a passage in this direction was afterwards made from the opposite side by Frobisher, Davis, and Baffin, who explored in this way the great bays of Hudson and Bathin, the coast of Greenland, &c.

Nor was the Frozen Ocean of Northern Asia neglected during this period. The English and Dutch made vigorous exertions to open a passage through the icy barriers of that ocean; and discovered Nova Zembla, the strait of Waygatz, and Spitzbergen. Russian travellers also penetrated to Okhotzk, on the eastern shore of the continent; and Beering finally rounded the eastern shore of Asia. The extent and boundaries of the Pacific were now the most unascertained problems in geography. A vast continent was still supposed to surround the South Pole; and in the north the separation of Asia and America was doubted. At this period our immortal Cook commenced his survey of this vast expanse of waters. He completely established the non-existence of a southern continent; examined the north-west coast of America, and the eastern coast of New Holland, and sailed round New Zealand. He also discovered New Caledonia, and made Europe acquainted with those interesting groups the Society, the Friendly, and the Sandwich Islands. See Cook. A succession of French and English navigators, Perouse, Vancouver, Labillardiere, Flinders, Wilson, &c., followed, and completed the survey of the large islands which have been sometimes denominated Australasia. The issue of their researches meets us in every part of our Gazetteer.

After all, large portions of terra incognita invite to future efforts. The interior of Africa or Asia, but especially the former, is little known: America has been more fortunate. We must still, however, not forget the obligations of science to a Park, Browne, Barrow, Lucas, Tuckey, Houghton, Denham, &c., with regard to the first of these objects; the efforts of Messrs. Elphinstone, Hodges, Kenneir, Malcolm, and Mercer, with regard to the second; or that the spirit of enterprise and discovery is roused to a greater extent than ever throughout the civilised world. The result cannot fail to give increasing interest to the study of this science.

given by an Englishman of the name of Wright in 1599. Mercator was also a Fleming.

In the seventeenth century the whole science was revolutionised by the successive efforts of the erudite Cluverius, the well-informed astronomer Riccioli, and the profound Varenius. Sir Isaac Newton, it is well known, translated and commented upon the works of the last of these writers. Ancient geography was also systematised at this period by Cellarius; while maps were much improved in France by Sanson, in Holland by Blaew, and in Sweden by Burcus.

One of the greatest geographical names in the last century is that of D'Anville. He greatly improved the method of comparing ancient and modern geography, abolished many foolish and arbitrary modes of delineation; and accomplished a complete reform in the historical part of the science. Statistical science in the mean time received an increased share of attention, and has been much indebted to the accurate Busching and his successors; among whom may be mentioned Bruns, Ebelins, and Wahl. Other continental geographers of eminence in the eighteenth century were Delisle, Cassini, Lacaille, and Lalande, who, with several of their follow-contributors to the papers of the French Academy, much advanced the mathematics of the science; Gosselin, Voss, Mannert, and Le Brun. We may also mention among the most distinguished of modern names in this science, our own countrymen Major Rennell, Dr. Vincent, and the late Mr. Pinkerton.

PART II.

OF PHYSICAL AND POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY. The physical geography of the world, would in strict language embrace a complete description of its internal and external organization and productions. Other sciences, however, take up the greater part of the details of these multifarious topics: geography only glances at them generally, and in their great outlines. Its principal topics are 1. The earth; 2. The ocean and waters; 3. The atmosphere; 4. The animal tribes; and, 5, The vegetable productions. Metals and minerals will be fully disposed of in the following article GEOLOGY; or in METALLURGY OF MINERALOGY.

Political geography regards the general state of human society in the several divisions of the globe. This has been divided into the savage, the barbarous, the half civilised and civilised states. These are again diversified by the political institutions of each part of the world. On the whole we feel that this is a topic which it is impossible to treat correctly, but in detail; and therefore refer the reader to the successive accounts of the political state and institutions of each portion of the globe; as they will be found in the body of this work.

1. Of the earth. Geology and mineralogy explain the formation and value of the various strata of which what we know of the earth is composed.