The whole of the coast-line of North America was now accurately laid down, but at the cost of what struggles, devotion, privations, and sufferings? What, however, is human life when weighed in the balance with the progress of science? and with what disinterestedness and enthusiasm must be embued the savants, sailors, and explorers, who give up all the joys of existence to contribute to the best of their power to the progress of knowledge and to the moral and intellectual development of humanity.
With the voyages last recorded the discovery of the earth was completed, and with our account of them our work, which began with the first attempts of the earliest explorers, also closes. The shape of the earth is now known, the task of explorers, is done. The land on which man lives is henceforth familiar to him, and he has now only to turn to account the vast resources of the countries to which access has recently become easy, or of which he can without difficulty possess himself.
How rich in lessons of every kind is this history of twenty centuries of exploration. Let us cast a glance behind us and enumerate the main features of the progress made in this long series of years. If we take the map of the world of Hecatæus, who lived 500 years before the Christian era, what do we see? When it was published the known world did not extend beyond the basin of the Mediterranean, and the whole, with a terribly distorted outline, is represented only by a very small portion of southern Europe, the interior of Asia, and part of North Africa; whilst encircling them all is a river without beginning or end, to which is given the name of Ocean.
Side by side with this map, ancient monument as it is of antique science, let us place a planisphere representing the world as known in 1840, and on this vast surface we shall find the portion known, and that but imperfectly to Hecatæus, occupying but an infinitesimal space.
Taking these two typical maps as our starting-point, we shall be able to judge of the magnitude of the discoveries of modern times. Imagine for a moment all that is involved in thorough knowledge of the whole world, and you will marvel at the results achieved by the efforts of so many explorers and martyrs, you will grasp the importance of their discoveries and the intimate relations between geography and all the other sciences. This is the point of view from which can best be seen all the philosophic bearings of a work to which so many generations have devoted themselves.
Doubtless the motives actuating these various explorers differ greatly. First, we have the natural curiosity of the owner anxious to know thoroughly every part of the domain belonging to him, so that he may estimate the extent of the habitable districts, and determine the boundaries of the seas, &c.; and secondly, we have the natural outcome of a trade, which, though still in its infancy, introduced even in remote Norway the products of Central Asian industry. In the time of Herodotus the aim of explorers was loftier: they wished to learn the history, manners, customs, and religion of foreign races; and later, the Crusades, which, whatever else they accomplished, certainly vulgarized oriental studies, inspired some few with a fervent desire to wrest from infidels the scene of our Lord's Passion, but the greater number with a lust of pillage and a yearning to explore the unknown.
Columbus, seeking a new route to the Indies, came across America on the way, and his successors were only anxious to make rapid fortunes, differing greatly indeed from the noble Portuguese who sacrificed their private interests to the glory and colonial prosperity of their country, and were the poorer for the offices conferred on them with a view to doing them honour.
In the sixteenth century religious persecution and civil war drove to the New World the Huguenots and Puritans, who, whilst laying for England the foundations of colonial prosperity, were to bring about a radical change in America. The next century was essentially one of colonization. In America the French, in India the English, and in Oceania the Dutch established counting-houses and offices, whilst missionaries endeavoured to win over to the Christian faith and modern ideas the unchangeable "Empire of the Mean."
The eighteenth century, ushering in our own, rectified received errors, and surveyed minutely alike continents and archipelagoes; in a word brought to perfection the work of its predecessors. The same task has occupied modern explorers, who pride themselves on not passing over in their surveys the smallest corner of the earth, or the tiniest islet. With a similar enthusiasm are imbued the intrepid navigators who penetrate the ice-bound solitudes of the two poles, and tear away the last fragments of the veil which has so long hidden from us the extremities of the globe.
All then is now known, classed, catalogued, and labelled! Will the results of so much toil be buried in some carefully laid down atlas, to be sought only by professionalsavants? No! it is reserved to our use, and to develope the resources of the globe, conquered for us by our fathers at the cost of so much danger and fatigue. Our heritage is too grand to be relinquished. We have at our command all the facilities of modern science for surveying, clearing, and working our property. No more lands lying fallow, no more impassable deserts, no more useless streams, no more unfathomable seas, no more inaccessible mountains!
We suppress the obstacles nature throws in our way. The isthmuses of Panama and Suez are in our way; we cut through them! The Sahara interferes with the connexion of Algeria and Senegal; we will throw a railway across it. The Pas de Calais prevents two nations so well fitted for cordial friendship from shaking each other by the hand; we will pierce it with a railway!
This is our task and that of our contemporaries. Is it less grand than that of our predecessors, that it has not yet succeeded in inspiring any great writer of fiction? To dwell upon it ourselves would be to exceed the limits we laid down for our work. We meant to write the History of the Discovery of the World, and we have written it. Our task therefore is complete.
FINIS.
FINIS.
LONDON:GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS,ST. JOHN'S SQUARE.
LONDON:GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS,ST. JOHN'S SQUARE.