The earliest conceptions of the earth, like those held by the primitive peoples of the present day, are difficult to discover and almost impossible fully to grasp. Early generalizations, as far as they were made from known facts, were usually expressed in symbolic language, and for our present purpose it is not profitable to speculate on the underlying truths which may sometimes be suspected in the old mythological cosmogonies.The first definite geographical theories to affect the western world were those evolved, or at least first expressed, by the Greeks.1The earliest theoretical problem of geography was theEarly Greek ideas.Flat earth of Homer.form of the earth. The natural supposition that the earth is a flat disk, circular or elliptical in outline, had in the time of Homer acquired a special definiteness by the introduction of the idea of the ocean river bounding the whole, an application of imperfectly understood observations. Thales of Miletus is claimed as the first exponent of the idea of a spherical earth; but, although this does not appear to be warranted, his disciple Anaximander (c.580B.C.) put forward the theory that the earth had the figure of a solid body hanging freely in the centre of the hollow sphere of the starry heavens. The Pythagorean school of philosophers adopted the theory of a spherical earth, but from metaphysical rather than scientific reasons; their convincing argument was that a sphere being the most perfect solid figure was the only one worthy to circumscribe the dwelling-place of man. The division of the sphere into parallel zones and some of the consequences of this generalization seem to have presented themselves to Parmenides (c.450B.C.); but these ideas did not influence the Ionian school of philosophers, who in their treatment of geography preferred to deal with facts demonstrable byHecataeus.Herodotus.travel rather than with speculations. Thus Hecataeus, claimed by H.F. Tozer2as the father of geography on account of hisPeriodos, or general treatise on the earth, did not advance beyond the primitive conception of a circular disk. He systematized the form of the land within the ring of ocean—theοἰκουμένη, or habitable world—by recognizing two continents: Europe to the north, and Asia to the south of the midland sea. Herodotus, equally oblivious of the sphere, criticized and ridiculed the circular outline of theoekumene, which he knew to be longer from east to west than it was broad from north to south. He also pointed out reasons for accepting a division of the land into three continents—Europe, Asia and Africa. Beyond the limits of his personal travels Herodotus applied the characteristically Greek theory of symmetry to complete, in the unknown, outlinesThe idea of symmetry.of lands and rivers analogous to those which had been explored. Symmetry was in fact the first geographical theory, and the effect of Herodotus’s hypothesis that the Nile must flow from west to east before turning north in order to balance the Danube running from west to east before turning south lingered in the maps of Africa down to the time of Mungo Park.3To Aristotle (384-322B.C.) must be given the distinction of founding scientific geography. He demonstrated the sphericity of the earth by three arguments, two of which could be tested by observation. These were: (1) that the earth must be spherical, becauseAristotle and the sphere.of the tendency of matter to fall together towards a common centre; (2) that only a sphere could always throw a circular shadow on the moon during an eclipse; and (3) that the shifting of the horizon and the appearance of new constellations, or the disappearance of familiar stars, as one travelled from north to south, could only be explained on the hypothesis that the earth was a sphere. Aristotle, too, gave greater definiteness to the idea of zones conceived by Parmenides, who had pictured a torrid zone uninhabitable by reason of heat, two frigid zones uninhabitable by reason of cold, and two intermediate temperate zones fit for human occupation. Aristotle defined the temperate zone as extending from the tropic to the arctic circle, but there is some uncertainty as to the precise meaning he gave to the term “arctic circle.” Soon after his time, however, this conception was clearly established, and with so large a generalization the mental horizon was widened to conceive of a geography which was a science. Aristotle had himself shown that in the southern temperate zone winds similar to those of the northern temperate zone should blow, but from the opposite direction.While the theory of the sphere was being elaborated the efforts of practical geographers were steadily directed towards ascertaining the outline and configuration of theoekumene, or habitable world, the only portion of the terrestrial surface knownFitting the oekumene to the sphere.to the ancients and to the medieval peoples, and still retaining a shadow of its old monopoly of geographical attention in its modern name of the “Old World.” The fitting of theoekumeneto the sphere was the second theoretical problem. The circular outline had given way in geographical opinion to the elliptical with the long axis lying east and west, and Aristotle was inclined to view it as a very long and relatively narrow band almost encircling the globe in the temperate zone. His argument as to the narrowness of the sea between West Africa and East Asia, from the occurrence of elephants at both extremities, is difficult to understand, although it shows that he looked on the distribution of animals as a problem of geography.Pythagoras had speculated as to the existence of antipodes, but it was not until the first approximately accurate measurements of the globe and estimates of the length and breadth of theoekumenewere made by Eratosthenes (c.250B.C.) thatProblem of the Antipodes.the fact that, as then known, it occupied less than a quarter of the surface of the sphere was clearly recognized. It was natural, if not strictly logical, that the ocean river should be extended from a narrow stream to a world-embracing sea, and here again Greek theory, or rather fancy, gave its modern name to the greatest feature of the globe. The old instinctive idea of symmetry must often have suggested otheroekumenebalancing the known world in the other quarters of the globe. The Stoic philosophers, especially Crates of Mallus, arguing from the love of nature for life, placed anoekumenein each quarter of the sphere, the three unknown world-islands being those of the Antoeci, Perioeci and Antipodes. This was a theory not only attractive to the philosophical mind, but eminently adapted to promote exploration. It had its opponents, however, for Herodotus showed that sea-basins existed cut off from the ocean, and it is still a matter of controversy how far the pre-Ptolemaic geographers believed in a water-connexion between the Atlantic and Indian oceans. It is quite clear that Pomponius Mela (c.A.D.40), following Strabo, held that the southern temperate zone contained a habitable land, which he designated by the nameAntichthones.Aristotle left no work on geography, so that it is impossible to know what facts he associated with the science of the earth’s surface. The word geography did not appear before Aristotle, the first use of it being in theΠερὶ κόσμων, which is oneAristotle’s geographical views.of the writings doubtfully ascribed to him, and H. Berger considers that the expression was introduced by Eratosthenes.4Aristotle was certainly conversant with many facts, such as the formation of deltas, coast-erosion, and to a certain extent the dependence of plants and animals on their physical surroundings. He formed a comprehensive theory of the variations of climate with latitude and season, and was convinced of the necessity of a circulation of water between the sea and rivers, though, like Plato, he held that this took place by water rising from the sea through crevices in the rocks, losing its dissolved salts in the process. He speculated on the differences in the character of races of mankind living in different climates, and correlated the political forms of communities with their situation on a seashore, or in the neighbourhood of natural strongholds.Strabo (c.50B.C.-A.D.24) followed Eratosthenes rather than Aristotle, but with sympathies which went out more to the human interests than the mathematical basis of geography. HeStrabo.compiled a very remarkable work dealing, in large measure from personal travel, with the countries surrounding the Mediterranean. He may be said to have set the pattern which was followed in succeeding ages by the compilers of “political geographies”dealing less with theories than with facts, and illustrating rather than formulating the principles of the science.Claudius Ptolemaeus (c.A.D.150) concentrated in his writings the final outcome of all Greek geographical learning, and passed it across the gulf of the middle ages by the hands of the Arabs, to form the starting-point of the science in modern times.Ptolemy.His geography was based more immediately on the work of his predecessor, Marinus of Tyre, and on that of Hipparchus, the follower and critic of Eratosthenes. It was the ambition of Ptolemy to describe and represent accurately the surface of theoekumene, for which purpose he took immense trouble to collect all existing determinations of the latitude of places, all estimates of longitude, and to make every possible rectification in the estimates of distances by land or sea. His work was mainly cartographical in its aim, and theory was as far as possible excluded. The symmetrically placed hypothetical islands in the great continuous ocean disappeared, and theoekumeneacquired a new form by the representation of the Indian Ocean as a larger Mediterranean completely cut off by land from the Atlantic. Theterra incognitauniting Africa and Farther Asia was an unfortunate hypothesis which helped to retard exploration. Ptolemy used the wordgeographyto signify the description of the wholeoekumeneon mathematical principles, whilechorographysignified the fuller description of a particular region, andtopographythe very detailed description of a smaller locality. He introduced the simile that geography represented an artist’s sketch of a whole portrait, while chorography corresponded to the careful and detailed drawing of an eye or an ear.5The Caliph al-Mamūn (c.A.D.815), the son and successor of Hārūn al-Rashīd, caused an Arabic version of Ptolemy’s great astronomical work (Σύνταξις μεγίστη) to be made, which is known as theAlmagest, the word being nothing more than the Gr.μεγίστηwith the Arabic articlealprefixed. The geography of Ptolemy was also known and is constantly referred to by Arab writers. The Arab astronomers measured a degree on the plains of Mesopotamia, thereby deducing a fair approximation to the size of the earth. The caliph’s librarian, Abu Jafar Muhammad Ben Musa, wrote a geographical work, now unfortunately lost, entitledRasm el Arsi(“A Description of the World”), which is often referred to by subsequent writers as having been composed on the model of that of Ptolemy.The middle ages saw geographical knowledge die out in Christendom, although it retained, through the Arabic translations of Ptolemy, a certain vitality in Islam. The verbal interpretation of Scripture led Lactantius (c.A.D.320) andGeography in the middle ages.other ecclesiastics to denounce the spherical theory of the earth as heretical. The wretched subterfuge of Cosmas (c.A.D.550) to explain the phenomena of the apparent movements of the sun by means of an earth modelled on the plan of the Jewish Tabernacle gave place ultimately to the wheel-maps—the T in an O—which reverted to the primitive ignorance of the times of Homer and Hecataeus.6The journey of Marco Polo, the increasing trade to the East and the voyages of the Arabs in the Indian Ocean prepared the way for the reacceptance of Ptolemy’s ideas when the sealed books of the Greek original were translated into Latin by Angelus in 1410.The old arguments of Aristotle and the old measurements of Ptolemy were used by Toscanelli and Columbus in urging a westward voyage to India; and mainly on this account did theRevival of geography.crossing of the Atlantic rank higher in the history of scientific geography than the laborious feeling out of the coast-line of Africa. But not until the voyage of Magellan shook the scales from the eyes of Europe did modern geography begin to advance. Discovery had outrun theory; the rush of new facts made Ptolemy practically obsolete in a generation, after having been the fount and origin of all geography for a millennium.The earliest evidence of the reincarnation of a sound theoretical geography is to be found in the text-books by Peter Apian and Sebastian Münster. Apian in hisCosmographicus liber, published in 1524, and subsequently edited and added toApianus.by Gemma Frisius under the title ofCosmographia, based the whole science on mathematics and measurement. He followed Ptolemy closely, enlarging on his distinction between geography and chorography, and expressing the artistic analogy in a rough diagram. This slender distinction was made much of by most subsequent writers until Nathanael Carpenter in 1625 pointed out that the difference between geography and chorography was simply one of degree, not of kind.Sebastian Münster, on the other hand, in hisCosmographia universalisof 1544, paid no regard to the mathematical basis of geography, but, following the model of Strabo, describedMünster.the world according to its different political divisions, and entered with great zest into the question of the productions of countries, and into the manners and costumes of the various peoples. Thus early commenced the separation between what were long called mathematical and political geography, the one subject appealing mainly to mathematicians, the other to historians.Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries the rapidly accumulating store of facts as to the extent, outline and mountain and river systems of the lands of the earth were put in order by the generation of cartographers of which Mercator was the chief; but the writings of Apian and Münster held the field for a hundred years without a serious rival, unless the many annotated editions of Ptolemy might be so considered. Meanwhile the new facts were the subject of original study by philosophers and by practical men without reference to classical traditions. Bacon argued keenly on geographical matters and was a lover of maps, in which he observed and reasoned upon such resemblances as that between the outlines of South America and Africa.Philip Cluver’sIntroductio in geographiam universam tam veterem quam novamwas published in 1624. Geography he defined as “the description of the whole earth, so far as it is known to us.” It is distinguished from cosmography by dealingCluverius.with the earth alone, not with the universe, and from chorography and topography by dealing with the whole earth, not with a country or a place. The first book, of fourteen short chapters, is concerned with the general properties of the globe; the remaining six books treat in considerable detail of the countries of Europe and of the other continents. Each country is described with particular regard to its people as well as to its surface, and the prominence given to the human element is of special interest.A little-known book which appears to have escaped the attention of most writers on the history of modern geography was published at Oxford in 1625 by Nathanael Carpenter, fellow ofCarpenter.Exeter College, with the titleGeographie delineated forth in Two Bookes, containing the Sphericall and Topicall parts thereof. It is discursive in its style and verbose; but, considering the period at which it appeared, it is remarkable for the strong common sense displayed by the author, his comparative freedom from prejudice, and his firm application of the methods of scientific reasoning to the interpretation of phenomena. Basing his work on the principles of Ptolemy, he brings together illustrations from the most recent travellers, and does not hesitate to take as illustrative examples the familiar city of Oxford and his native county of Devon. He divides geography intoThe Spherical Part, or that for the study of which mathematics alone is required, andThe Topical Part, or the description of the physical relations of parts of the earth’s surface, preferring this division to that favoured by the ancient geographers—into general and special. It is distinguished from other English geographical books of the period by confining attention to the principles of geography, and not describing the countries of the world.A much more important work in the history of geographical method is theGeographia generalisof Bernhard Varenius, a German medical doctor of Leiden, who died at the age of twenty-eight in 1650, the year of the publication of his book.Varenius.Although for a time it was lost sight of on the continent, Sir Isaac Newton thought so highly of this book that he prepared an annotated edition which was published in Cambridge in 1672, with the addition of the plates which had been planned by Varenius, but not produced by the original publishers. “The reason why this great man took so much care in correcting and publishing our author was, because he thought him necessary to be read by his audience, the young gentlemen of Cambridge, while he was delivering lectures on the same subject from the Lucasian Chair.”7The treatise of Varenius is a model of logical arrangement and terse expression; it is a work of science and of genius; one of the few of that age which can still be studied with profit. The English translation renders the definition thus: “Geography is that part ofmixed mathematicswhich explains the state of the earth and of its parts, depending on quantity, viz. its figure, place, magnitude and motion, with the celestial appearances, &c. By some it is taken in too limited a sense, for a bare description of the several countries; and by others too extensively, who along with such a description would have their political constitution.”Varenius was reluctant to include the human side of geography in his system, and only allowed it as a concession to custom, and in order to attract readers by imparting interest to the sterner details of the science. His division of geography was into two parts—(i.) General or universal, dealing with the earth in general, and explaining its properties without regard to particular countries; and (ii.) Special or particular, dealing with each country in turn from the chorographical or topographical point of view. General geography was divided into—(1) theAbsolutepart, dealing with the form, dimensions, position and substance of the earth, the distribution of land and water, mountains, woods and deserts, hydrography (including all the waters of the earth) and the atmosphere; (2) theRelativepart, including the celestial properties,i.e.latitude, climate zones, longitude, &c.; and (3) theComparativepart, which “considers theparticulars arising from comparing one part with another”; but under this head the questions discussed were longitude, the situation and distances of places, and navigation. Varenius does not treat of special geography, but gives a scheme for it under three heads—(1)Terrestrial, including position, outline, boundaries, mountains, mines, woods and deserts, waters, fertility and fruits, and living creatures; (2)Celestial, including appearance of the heavens and the climate; (3)Human, but this was added out of deference to popular usage.This system of geography founded a new epoch, and the book—translated into English, Dutch and French—was the unchallenged standard for more than a century. The framework was capable of accommodating itself to new facts, and was indeed far in advance of the knowledge of the period. The method included a recognition of the causes and effects of phenomena as well as the mere fact of their occurrence, and for the first time the importance of the vertical relief of the land was fairly recognized.The physical side of geography continued to be elaborated after Varenius’s methods, while the historical side was developed separately. Both branches, although enriched by new facts, remained stationary so far as method is concerned until nearly the end of the 18th century. The compilation of “geography books” by uninstructed writers led to the pernicious habit, which is not yet wholly overcome, of reducing the general or “physical” part to a few pages of concentrated information, and expanding the particular or “political” part by including unrevised travellers’ stories and uncritical descriptions of the various countries of the world. Such books were in fact not geography, but merely compressed travel.The next marked advance in the theory of geography may be taken as the nearly simultaneous studies of the physical earth carried out by the Swedish chemist, Torbern Bergman, acting under the impulse of Linnaeus, and by the GermanBergman.philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Bergman’sPhysical Description of the Earthwas published in Swedish in 1766, and translated into English in 1772 and into German in 1774. It is a plain, straightforward description of the globe, and of the various phenomena of the surface, dealing only with definitely ascertained facts in the natural order of their relationships, but avoiding any systematic classification or even definitions of terms.The problems of geography had been lightened by the destructive criticism of the French cartographer D’Anville (who had purged the map of the world of the last remnants of traditional fact unverified by modern observations) and renderedKant.richer by the dawn of the new era of scientific travel, when Kant brought his logical powers to bear upon them. Kant’s lectures on physical geography were delivered in the university of Königsberg from 1765 onwards.8Geography appealed to him as a valuable educational discipline, the joint foundation with anthropology of that “knowledge of the world” which was the result of reason and experience. In this connexion he divided the communication of experience from one person to another into two categories—the narrative or historical and the descriptive or geographical; both history and geography being viewed as descriptions, the former a description in order of time, the latter a description in order of space.Physical geography he viewed as a summary of nature, the basis not only of history but also of “all the other possible geographies,” of which he enumerates five, viz. (1)Mathematical geography, which deals with the form, size and movements of the earth and its place in the solar system; (2)Moral geography, or an account of the different customs and characters of mankind according to the region they inhabit; (3)Political geography, the divisions according to their organized governments; (4)Mercantile geography, dealing with the trade in the surplus products of countries; (5)Theological geography, or the distribution of religions. Here there is a clear and formal statement of the interaction and causal relation of all the phenomena of distribution on the earth’s surface, including the influence of physical geography upon the various activities of mankind from the lowest to the highest. Notwithstanding the form of this classification, Kant himself treats mathematical geography as preliminary to, and therefore not dependent on, physical geography. Physical geography itself is divided into two parts: a general, which has to do with the earth and all that belongs to it—water, air and land; and a particular, which deals with special products of the earth—mankind, animals, plants and minerals. Particular importance is given to the vertical relief of the land, on which the various branches of human geography are shown to depend.Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was the first modern geographer to become a great traveller, and thus to acquire an extensive stock of first-hand information on which an improved system of geography might be founded. The impulseHumboldt.given to the study of natural history by the example of Linnaeus; the results brought back by Sir Joseph Banks, Dr Solander and the two Forsters, who accompanied Cook in his voyages of discovery; the studies of De Saussure in the Alps, and the lists of desiderata in physical geography drawn up by that investigator, combined to prepare the way for Humboldt. The theory of geography was advanced by Humboldt mainly by his insistence on the great principle of the unity of nature. He brought all the “observable things,” which the eager collectors of the previous century had been heaping together regardless of order or system, into relation with the vertical relief and the horizontal forms of the earth’s surface. Thus he demonstrated that the forms of the land exercise a directive and determining influence on climate, plant life, animal life and on man himself. This was no new idea; it had been familiar for centuries in a less definite form, deduced from a priori considerations, and so far as regards the influence of surrounding circumstances upon man, Kant had already given it full expression. Humboldt’s concrete illustrations and the remarkable power of his personality enabled him to enforce these principles in a way that produced an immediate and lasting effect. The treatises on physical geography by Mrs Mary Somerville and Sir John Herschel (the latter written for the eighth edition of theEncyclopaedia Britannica) showed the effect produced in Great Britain by the stimulus of Humboldt’s work.Humboldt’s contemporary, Carl Ritter (1779-1859), extended and disseminated the same views, and in his interpretation of “Comparative Geography” he laid stress on the importance of forming conclusions, not from the study of one region byRitter.itself, but from the comparison of the phenomena of many places. Impressed by the influence of terrestrial relief and climate on human movements, Ritter was led deeper and deeper into the study of history and archaeology. His monumentalVergleichende Geographie, which was to have made the whole world its theme, died out in a wilderness of detail in twenty-one volumes before it had covered more of the earth’s surface than Asia and a portion of Africa. Some of his followers showed a tendency to look on geography rather as an auxiliary to history than as a study of intrinsic worth.During the rapid development of physical geography many branches of the study of nature, which had been included in the cosmography of the early writers, the physiography of Linnaeus and even theErdkundeof Ritter, had beenGeography as a natural science.so much advanced by the labours of specialists that their connexion was apt to be forgotten. Thus geology, meteorology, oceanography and anthropology developed into distinct sciences. The absurd attempt was, and sometimes is still, made by geographers to include all natural science in geography; but it is more common for specialists in the various detailed sciences to think, and sometimes to assert, that the ground of physical geography is now fully occupied by these sciences. Political geography has been too often looked on from both sides as a mere summary of guide-book knowledge, useful in the schoolroom, a poor relation of physical geography that it was rarely necessary to recognize.The science of geography, passed on from antiquity by Ptolemy, re-established by Varenius and Newton, and systematized by Kant, included within itself definite aspects of all those terrestrial phenomena which are now treated exhaustively under the heads of geology, meteorology, oceanography and anthropology; and the inclusion of the requisite portions of the perfected results of these sciences in geography is simply the gathering in of fruit matured from the seed scattered by geography itself.The study of geography was advanced by improvements in cartography (seeMap), not only in the methods of survey and projection, but in the representation of the third dimension by means of contour lines introduced by Philippe Buache in 1737, and the more remarkable because less obvious invention of isotherms introduced by Humboldt in 1817.The “argument from design” had been a favourite form of reasoning amongst Christian theologians, and, as worked out by Paley in hisNatural Theology, it served the useful purpose of emphasizing the fitness which exists between all theThe teleological argument in geography.inhabitants of the earth and their physical environment. It was held that the earth had been created so as to fit the wants of man in every particular. This argument was tacitly accepted or explicitly avowed by almost every writer on the theory of geography, and Carl Ritter distinctly recognized and adopted it as the unifying principle of his system. As a student of nature, however, he did not fail to see, and as professor of geography he always taught, that man was in very large measure conditioned by his physical environment. The apparent opposition of the observed fact to the assigned theory he overcame by looking upon the forms of the land and the arrangement of land and sea as instruments of Divine Providence for guiding the destiny as well as for supplying the requirements of man. This was the central theme of Ritter’s philosophy; his religion and his geography were one, and the consequent fervour with which he pursued his mission goes far to account for the immense influence he acquired in Germany.The evolutionary theory, more than hinted at in Kant’s “Physical Geography,” has, since the writings of Charles Darwin, become the unifying principle in geography. The conception of the development of the plan of the earth from the firstThe theory of evolution in geography.cooling of the surface of the planet throughout the long geological periods, the guiding power of environment on the circulation of water and of air, on the distribution of plants and animals, and finally on the movements of man, give to geography a philosophical dignity and a scientific completenesswhich it never previously possessed. The influence of environment on the organism may not be quite so potent as it was once believed to be, in the writings of Buckle, for instance,9and certainly man, the ultimate term in the series, reacts upon and greatly modifies his environment; yet the fact that environment does influence all distributions is established beyond the possibility of doubt. In this way also the position of geography, at the point where physical science meets and mingles with mental science, is explained and justified. The change which took place during the 19th century in the substance and style of geography may be well seen by comparing the eight volumes of Malte-Brun’sGéographie universelle(Paris, 1812-1829) with the twenty-one volumes of Reclus’sGéographie universelle(Paris, 1876-1895).In estimating the influence of recent writers on geography it is usual to assign to Oscar Peschel (1826-1875) the credit of having corrected the preponderance which Ritter gave to the historical element, and of restoring physical geography to its old pre-eminence.10As a matter of fact, each of the leading modern exponents of theoretical geography—such as Ferdinand von Richthofen, Hermann Wagner, Friedrich Ratzel, William M. Davis, A. Penck, A. de Lapparent and Elisée Reclus—has his individual point of view, one devoting more attention to the results of geological processes, another to anthropological conditions, and the rest viewing the subject in various blendings of the extreme lights.The two conceptions which may now be said to animate the theory of geography are the genetic, which depends upon processes of origin, and the morphological, which depends on facts of form and distribution.Progress of Geographical DiscoveryExploration and geographical discovery must have started from more than one centre, and to deal justly with the matter one ought to treat of these separately in the early ages before the whole civilized world was bound together by the bonds of modern intercommunication. At the least there should be some consideration of four separate systems of discovery—the Eastern, in which Chinese and Japanese explorers acquired knowledge of the geography of Asia, and felt their way towards Europe and America; the Western, in which the dominant races of the Mexican and South American plateaus extended their knowledge of the American continent before Columbus; the Polynesian, in which the conquering races of the Pacific Islands found their way from group to group; and the Mediterranean. For some of these we have no certain information, and regarding others the tales narrated in the early records are so hard to reconcile with present knowledge that they are better fitted to be the battle-ground of scholars championing rival theories than the basis of definite history. So it has come about that the only practicable history of geographical exploration starts from the Mediterranean centre, the first home of that civilization which has come to be known as European, though its field of activity has long since overspread the habitable land of both temperate zones, eastern Asia alone in part excepted.From all centres the leading motives of exploration were probably the same—commercial intercourse, warlike operations, whether resulting in conquest or in flight, religious zeal expressed in pilgrimages or missionary journeys, or, from the other side, the avoidance of persecution, and, more particularly in later years, the advancement of knowledge for its own sake. At different times one or the other motive predominated.Before the 14th centuryB.C.the warrior kings of Egypt had carried the power of their arms southward from the delta of the Nile well-nigh to its source, and eastward to the confines of Assyria. The hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt and the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria are rich in records of the movements and achievements of armies, the conquest of towns and the subjugation of peoples; but though many of the recorded sites have been identified, their discovery by wandering armies was isolated from their subsequent history and need not concern us here.The Phoenicians are the earliest Mediterranean people in the consecutive chain of geographical discovery which joins pre-historic time with the present. From Sidon, and later from its more famous rival Tyre, the merchant adventurers ofThe Phoenicians.Phoenicia explored and colonized the coasts of the Mediterranean and fared forth into the ocean beyond. They traded also on the Red sea, and opened up regular traffic with India as well as with the ports of the south and west, so that it was natural for Solomon to employ the merchant navies of Tyre in his oversea trade. The western emporium known in the scriptures as Tarshish was probably situated in the south of Spain, possibly at Cadiz, although some writers contend that it was Carthage in North Africa. Still more diversity of opinion prevails as to the southern gold-exporting port of Ophir, which some scholars place in Arabia, others at one or another point on the east coast of Africa. Whether associated with the exploitation of Ophir (q.v.) or not the first great voyage of African discovery appears to have been accomplished by the Phoenicians sailing the Red Sea. Herodotus (himself a notable traveller in the 5th centuryB.C.) relates that the Egyptian king Necho of the XXVIth Dynasty (c.600B.C.) built a fleet on the Red Sea, and confided it to Phoenician sailors with the orders to sail southward and return to Egypt by the Pillars of Hercules and the Mediterranean sea. According to the tradition, which Herodotus quotes sceptically, this was accomplished; but the story is too vague to be accepted as more than a possibility.The great Phoenician colony of Carthage, founded before 800B.C., perpetuated the commercial enterprise of the parent state, and extended the sphere of practical trade to the ocean shores of Africa and Europe. The most celebrated voyage of antiquity undertaken for the express purpose of discovery was that fitted out by the senate of Carthage under the command of Hanno, with the intention of founding new colonies along the west coast of Africa. According to Pliny, the only authority on this point, the period of the voyage was that of the greatest prosperity of Carthage, which may be taken as somewhere between 570 and 480B.C.The extent of this voyage is doubtful, but it seems probable that the farthest point reached was on the east-running coast which bounds the Gulf of Guinea on the north. Himilco, a contemporary of Hanno, was charged with an expedition along the west coast of Iberia northward, and as far as the uncertain references to this voyage can be understood, he seems to have passed the Bay of Biscay and possibly sighted the coast of England.The sea power of the Greek communities on the coast of Asia Minor and in the Archipelago began to be a formidable rival to the Phoenician soon after the time of Hanno and Himilco, and peculiar interest attaches to the first recorded GreekThe Greeks.voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Pytheas, a navigator of the Phocean colony of Massilia (Marseilles), determined the latitude of that port with considerable precision by the somewhat clumsy method of ascertaining the length of the longest day, and when, about 330B.C., he set out on exploration to the northward in search of the lands whence came gold, tin and amber, he followed this system of ascertaining his position from time to time. If on each occasion he himself made the observations his voyage must have extended over six years; but it is not impossible that he ascertained the approximate length of the longest day in some cases by questioning the natives. Pytheas, whose own narrative is not preserved, coasted the Bay of Biscay, sailed up the English Channel and followed the coast of Britain to its most northerly point. Beyond this he spoke of a land calledThule, which, if his estimate of the length of the longest day is correct, may have been Shetland, but was possibly Iceland; and from some confused statements as to a sea which could not be sailed through, it has been assumed that Pytheas was the first of the Greeks to obtain direct knowledge of the Arctic regions. During this or a second voyage Pytheas entered the Baltic, discovered the coasts where amber is obtained and returned to the Mediterranean. It does not seem that any maritime trade followed these discoveries, and indeed it is doubtful whether his contemporaries accepted the truth of Pytheas’s narrative; Strabo four hundred years later certainly did not, but the critical studies of modern scholars have rehabilitated the Massilian explorer.The Greco-Persian wars had made the remoter parts of Asia Minor more than a name to the Greek geographers before the time of Alexander the Great, but the campaigns of that conquerorAlexander the Great.from 329 to 325B.C.opened up the greater Asia to the knowledge of Europe. His armies crossed the plains beyond the Caspian, penetrated the wild mountain passes north-west of India, and did not turn back until they had entered on the Indo-Gangetic plain. This was one of the few great epochs of geographical discovery.The world was henceforth viewed as a very large place stretching far on every side beyond the Midland or Mediterranean Sea, and the land journey of Alexander resulted in a voyage of discovery in the outer ocean from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Tigris, thus opening direct intercourse between Grecian and Hindu civilization. The Greeks who accompanied Alexander described with care the towns and villages, the products and the aspect of the country. The conqueror also intended to open up trade by sea between Europe and India, and the narrative of his general Nearchus records this famous voyage of discovery, the detailed accounts of the chief pilot Onesicritus being lost. At the beginning of October 326B.C.Nearchus left the Indus with his fleet, and the anchorages sought for each night are carefully recorded. He entered the Persian Gulf, and rejoined Alexander at Susa, when he was ordered to prepare another expedition for the circumnavigation of Arabia. Alexander died at Babylon in 323B.C., and the fleet was dispersed without making the voyage.The dynasties founded by Alexander’s generals, Seleucus, Antiochus and Ptolemy, encouraged the same spirit of enterprise which their master had fostered, and extended geographical knowledge in several directions. Seleucus Nicator established the Greco-Bactrian empire and continued the intercourse with India. Authentic information respecting the great valley of the Ganges was supplied by Megasthenes, an ambassador sent by Seleucus, who reached the remote city of Patali-putra, the modern Patna.The Ptolemies in Egypt showed equal anxiety to extend the bounds of geographical knowledge. Ptolemy Euergetes (247-222B.C.)rendered the greatest service to geography by the protection andThe Ptolemies.encouragement of Eratosthenes, whose labours gave the first approximate knowledge of the true size of the spherical earth. The second Euergetes and his successor Ptolemy Lathyrus (118-115B.C.) furnished Eudoxus with a fleet to explore the Arabian sea. After two successful voyages, Eudoxus, impressed with the idea that Africa was surrounded by ocean on the south, left the Egyptian service, and proceeded to Cadiz and other Mediterranean centres of trade seeking a patron who would finance an expedition for the purpose of African discovery; and we learn from Strabo that the veteran explorer made at least two voyages southward along the coast of Africa. The Ptolemies continued to send fleets annually from their Red Sea ports of Berenice and Myos Hormus to Arabia, as well as to ports on the coasts of Africa and India.The Romans did not encourage navigation and commerce with the same ardour as their predecessors; still the luxury of Rome, which gave rise to demands for the varied products of all the countries of the known world, led to an activeThe Romans.trade both by ships and caravans. But it was the military genius of Rome, and the ambition for universal empire, which led, not only to the discovery, but also to the survey of nearly all Europe, and of large tracts in Asia and Africa. Every new war produced a new survey and itinerary of the countries which were conquered, and added one more to the imperishable roads that led from every quarter of the known world to Rome. In the height of their power the Romans had surveyed and explored all the coasts of the Mediterranean, Italy, Greece, the Balkan Peninsula, Spain, Gaul, western Germany and southern Britain. In Africa their empire included Egypt, Carthage, Numidia and Mauritania. In Asia they held Asia Minor and Syria, had sent expeditions into Arabia, and were acquainted with the more distant countries formerly invaded by Alexander, including Persia, Scythia, Bactria and India. Roman intercourse with India especially led to the extension of geographical knowledge.Before the Roman legions were sent into a new region to extend the limits of the empire, it was usual to send out exploring expeditions to report as to the nature of the country. It is narrated by Pliny and Seneca that the emperor Nero sent out two centurions on such a mission towards the source of the Nile (probably aboutA.D.60), and that the travellers pushed southwards until they reached vast marshes through which they could not make their way either on foot or in boats. This seems to indicate that they had penetrated to about 9° N. Shortly beforeA.D.79 Hippalus took advantage of the regular alternation of the monsoons to make the voyage from the Red Sea to India across the open ocean out of sight of land. Even though this sea-route was known, the author of thePeriplus of the Erythraean Sea, published after the time of Pliny, recites the old itinerary around the coast of the Arabian Gulf. It was, however, in the reigns of Severus and his immediate successors that Roman intercourse with India was at its height, and from the writings of Pausanias (c.174) it appears that direct communication between Rome and China had already taken place.After the division of the Roman empire, Constantinople became the last refuge of learning, arts and taste; while Alexandria continued to be the emporium whence were imported the commodities of the East. The emperor Justinian (483-565), in whose reign the greatness of the Eastern empire culminated, sent two Nestorian monks to China, who returned with eggs of the silkworm concealed in a hollow cane, and thus silk manufactures were established in the Peloponnesus and the Greek islands. It was also in the reign of Justinian that Cosmas Indicopleustes, an Egyptian merchant, made several voyages, and afterwards composed hisΧριστιανικὴ τοπογραφία(Christian Topography), containing, in addition to his absurd cosmogony, a tolerable description of India.The great outburst of Mahommedan conquest in the 7th century was followed by the Arab civilization, having its centres at Bagdad and Cordova, in connexion with which geography again received a share of attention. The works of the ancientThe Arabs.Greek geographers were translated into Arabic, and starting with a sound basis of theoretical knowledge, exploration once more made progress. From the 9th to the 13th century intelligent Arab travellers wrote accounts of what they had seen and heard in distant lands. The earliest Arabian traveller whose observations have come down to us is the merchant Sulaiman, who embarked in the Persian Gulf and made several voyages to India and China, in the middle of the 9th century. Abu Zaid also wrote on India, and his work is the most important that we possess before the epoch-making discoveries of Marco Polo. Masudi, a great traveller who knew from personal experience all the countries between Spain and China, described the plains, mountains and seas, the dynasties and peoples, in hisMeadows of Gold, an abstract made by himself of his larger workNews of the Time. He died in 956, and was known, from the comprehensiveness of his survey, as the Pliny of the East. Amongst his contemporaries were Istakhri, who travelled through all the Mahommedan countries and wrote hisBook of Climatesin 950, and Ibn Haukal, whoseBook of Roads and Kingdoms, based on the work of Istakhri, was written in 976. Idrisi, the best known of the Arabian geographical authors, after travelling far and wide in the first half of the 12th century, settled in Sicily, where he wrote a treatise descriptive of an armillary sphere which he had constructed for Roger II., the Norman king, and in this work he incorporated all accessible results of contemporary travel.The Northmen of Denmark and Norway, whose piratical adventures were the terror of all the coasts of Europe, and who established themselves in Great Britain and Ireland, in France and Sicily, were also geographical explorers in their rough butThe Northmen.practical way during the darkest period of the middle ages. All Northmen were not bent on rapine and plunder; many were peaceful merchants. Alfred the Great, king of the Saxons in England, not only educated his people in the learning of the past ages; he inserted in the geographical works he translated many narratives of the travel of his own time. Thus he placed on record the voyages of the merchant Ulfsten in the Baltic, including particulars of the geography of Germany. And in particular he told of the remarkable voyage of Other, a Norwegian of Helgeland, who was the first authentic Arctic explorer, the first to tell of the rounding of the North Cape and the sight of the midnight sun. This voyage of the middle of the 9th century deserves to be held in happy memory, for it unites the first Norwegian polar explorer with the first English collector of travels. Scandinavian merchants brought the products of India to England and Ireland. From the 8th to the 11th century a commercial route from India passed through Novgorod to the Baltic, and Arabian coins found in Sweden, and particularly in the island of Gotland, prove how closely the enterprise of the Northmen and of the Arabs intertwined. Five-sixths of these coins preserved at Stockholm were from the mints of the Samanian dynasty, which reigned in Khorasan and Transoxiana from aboutA.D.900 to 1000. It was the trade with the East that originally gave importance to the city of Visby in Gotland.In the end of the 9th century Iceland was colonized from Norway; and about 985 the intrepid viking, Eric the Red, discovered Greenland, and induced some of his Icelandic countrymen to settle on its inhospitable shores. His son, Leif Ericsson, and others of his followers were concerned in the discovery of the North American coast (seeVinland), which, but for the isolation of Iceland from the centres of European awakening, would have had momentous consequences. As things were, the importance of this discovery passed unrecognized. The story of two Venetians, Nicolo and Antonio Zeno, who gave a vague account of voyages in the northern seas in the end of the 13th century, is no longer to be accepted as history.At length the long period of barbarism which accompanied and followed the fall of the Roman empire drew to a close in Europe. The Crusades had a favourable influence on the intellectual state of the Western nations. Interesting regions,Close of the dark ages.known only by the scant reports of pilgrims, were made the objects of attention and study; while religious zeal, and the hope of gain, combined with motives of mere curiosity, induced several persons to travel by land into remote regions of the East, far beyond the countries to which the operations of the crusaders extended. Among these was Benjamin of Tudela, who set out from Spain in 1160, travelled by land to Constantinople, and having visited India and some of the eastern islands, returned to Europe by way of Egypt after an absence of thirteen years.Joannes de Plano Carpini, a Franciscan monk, was the head of one of the missions despatched by Pope Innocent to call the chief and people of the Tatars to a better mind. He reached the headquarters of Batu, on the Volga, in FebruaryAsiatic journeys.1246; and, after some stay, went on to the camp of the great khan near Karakorum in central Asia, and returned safely in the autumn of 1247. A few years afterwards, a Fleming named Rubruquis was sent on a similar mission, and had the merit of being the first traveller of this era who gave a correct account of the Caspian Sea. He ascertained that it had no outlet. At nearly the same time Hayton, king of Armenia, made a journey to Karakorum in 1254, by a route far to the north of that followed by Carpini and Rubruquis. He was treated with honour and hospitality, and returned by way of Samarkand and Tabriz, to his own territory. The curious narrative of King Hayton was translated by Klaproth.While the republics of Italy, and above all the state of Venice, were engaged in distributing the rich products of India and the Far East over the Western world, it was impossible that motives of curiosity, as well as a desire of commercial advantage, should not be awakened to such a degree as to impel some of the merchants to visit those remote lands. Among these were the brothers Polo, who traded with the East and themselves visited Tatary. The recital of their travels fired the youthful imagination of young Marco Polo, son of Nicolo, and he set out for the court of Kublai Khan, with his father and uncle, in 1265. Marco remained for seventeen years in the service of the Great Khan, and was employed on many important missions. Besides what he learnt from his own observation, he collected much information from others concerning countries which he did not visit. He returned to Europe possessed of a vast store of knowledge respecting the eastern parts of the world, and, being afterwards made a prisoner by the Genoese, he dictated the narrative of his travels during his captivity. The work of Marco Polo is the most valuable narrative of travels that appeared during the middle ages, and despite a cold reception and many denials of the accuracy of the record, its substantial truthfulness has been abundantly proved.Missionaries continued to do useful geographical work. Among them were John of Monte Corvino, a Franciscan monk, Andrew of Perugia, John Marignioli and Friar Jordanus, who visited the west coast of India, and above all Friar Odoric of Pordenone. Odoric set out on his travels about 1318, and his journeys embraced parts of India, the Malay Archipelago, China and even Tibet, where he was the first European to enter Lhasa, not yet a forbidden city.Ibn Batuta, the great Arab traveller, is separated by a wide space of time from his countrymen already mentioned, and he finds his proper place in a chronological notice after the days of Marco Polo, for he did not begin his wanderings until 1325, his career thus coinciding in time with the fabled journeyings of Sir John Mandeville. While Arab learning flourished during the darkest ages of European ignorance, the last of the Arab geographers lived to see the dawn of the great period of the European awakening. Ibn Batuta went by land from Tangier to Cairo, then visited Syria, and performed the pilgrimages to Medina and Mecca. After exploring Persia, and again residing for some time at Mecca, he made a voyage down the Red sea to Yemen, and travelled through that country to Aden. Thence he visited the African coast, touching at Mombasa and Quiloa, and then sailed across to Ormuz and the Persian Gulf. He crossed Arabia from Bahrein to Jidda, traversed the Red sea and the desert to Syene, and descended the Nile to Cairo. After this he revisited Syria and Asia Minor, and crossed the Black sea, the desert from Astrakhan to Bokhara, and the Hindu Kush. He was in the service of Muhammad Tughluk, ruler of Delhi, about eight years, and was sent on an embassy to China, in the course of which the ambassadors sailed down the west coast of India to Calicut, and then visited the Maldive Islands and Ceylon. Ibn Batuta made the voyage through the Malay Archipelago to China, and on his return he proceeded from Malabar to Bagdad and Damascus, ultimately reaching Fez, the capital of his native country, in November 1349. After a journey into Spain he set out once more for Central Africa in 1352, and reached Timbuktu and the Niger, returning to Fez in 1353. His narrative was committed to writing from his dictation.The European country which had come the most completely under the influence of Arab culture now began to send forth explorers to distant lands, though the impulse came not from the Moors but from Italian merchant navigators in SpanishSpanish exploration.service. The peaceful reign of Henry III. of Castile is famous for the attempts of that prince to extend the diplomatic relations of Spain to the remotest parts of the earth. He sent embassies to all the princes of Christendom and to the Moors. In 1403 the Spanish king sent a knight of Madrid, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, to the distant court of Timur, at Samarkand. He returned in 1406, and wrote a valuable narrative of his travels.Italians continued to make important journeys in the East during the 15th century. Among them was Nicolo Conti, who passed through Persia, sailed along the coast of Malabar, visited Sumatra, Java and the south of China, returned by the Red sea, and got home to Venice in 1444 after an absence of twenty-five years. He related his adventures to Poggio Bracciolini, secretary to Pope Eugenius IV.; and the narrative contains much interesting information. One of the most remarkable of the Italian travellers was Ludovico di Varthema, who left his native land in 1502. He went to Egypt and Syria, and for the sake of visiting the holy cities became a Mahommedan. He was the first European who gave an account of the interior of Yemen. He afterwards visited and described many places in Persia, India and the Malay Archipelago, returning to Europe in a Portuguese ship after an absence of five years.In the 15th century the time was approaching when the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope was to widen the scope of geographical enterprise. This great event was preceded by the general utilization in Europe of the polarity of the magneticPortuguese exploration—Prince Henry the Navigator.needle in the construction of the mariner’s compass. Portugal took the lead along this new path, and foremost among her pioneers stands Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), who was a patron both of exploration and of the study of geographical theory. The great westward projection of the coast of Africa, and the islands to the north-west of that continent, were the principal scene of the work of the mariners sent out at his expense; but his object was to push onward and reach India from the Atlantic. The progress of discovery received a check on his death, but only for a time. In 1462 Pedro de Cintra extended Portuguese exploration along the African coast and discovered Sierra Leone. Fernan Gomez followed in 1469, and opened trade with the Gold Coast; and in 1484 Diogo Cão discovered the mouth of the Congo. The king of Portugal next despatched Bartolomeu Diaz in 1486 to continue discoveries southwards; while, in the following year, he sent Pedro de Covilhão and Affonso de Payva to discover the country of Prester John. Diaz succeeded in rounding the southern point of Africa, which he named Cabo Tormentoso—the Cape of Storms—but King João II., foreseeing the realization of the long-sought passage to India, gave it the stimulating and enduring name of the Cape of Good Hope. Payva died at Cairo; but Covilhão, having heard that a Christian ruler reigned in the mountains of Ethiopia, penetrated into Abyssinia in 1490. He delivered the letter which João II. had addressed to Prester John to the Negus Alexander of Abyssinia, but he was detained by that prince and never allowed to leave the country.The Portuguese, following the lead of Prince Henry, continued to look for the road to India by the Cape of Good Hope. The same end was sought by Christopher Columbus, following the suggestion of Toscanelli, and under-estimating the diameterColumbus.of the globe, by sailing due west. The voyages of Columbus (1492-1498) resulted in the discovery of the West Indies and North America which barred the way to the Far East. In 1493 the pope, Alexander VI., issued a bull instituting the famous “line of demarcation” running from N. to S. 100 leagues W. of the Azores, to the west of which the Spaniards were authorized to explore and to the east of which the Portuguese received the monopoly of discovery. The direct line of Portuguese exploration resulted in the discovery of the Cape route to India by Vasco da Gama (1498), and in 1500 to the independent discovery of South America by Pedro Alvarez Cabral. The voyages of Columbus and of Vasco da Gama were so important that it is unnecessary to detail their results in this place. SeeColumbus, Christopher;Gama, Vasco da.The three voyages of Vasco da Gama (who died on the scene of his labours, at Cochin, in 1524) revolutionized the commerce of the East. Until then the Venetians held the carrying tradeVasco da Gama.of India, which was brought by the Persian Gulf and Red sea into Syria and Egypt, the Venetians receiving the products of the East at Alexandria and Beirut and distributing them over Europe. This commerce was a great source of wealth to Venice; but after the discovery of the new passage round the Cape, and the conquests of the Portuguese, the trade of the East passed into other hands.The discoveries of Columbus awakened a spirit of enterprise in Spain which continued in full force for a century; adventurers flocked eagerly across the Atlantic, and discovery followed discovery in rapid succession. Many of the companionsSpaniards in America.of Columbus continued his work. Vicente Yañez Pinzon in 1500 reached the mouth of the Amazon. In the same year Alonso de Ojeda, accompanied by Juan de la Cosa, from whose maps we learn much of the discoveries of the 16th century navigators, and by a Florentine named Amerigo Vespucci, touched the coast of South America somewhere near Surinam, following the shore as far as the Gulf of Maracaibo. Vespucci afterwards made three voyages to the Brazilian coast; and in 1504 he wrote an account of his four voyages, which was widely circulated, and became the means of procuring for its author at the hands of the cartographer Waldseemüller in 1507 the disproportionate distinction of giving his name to the whole continent. In 1508 Alonso de Ojeda obtained the government of the coast of South America from Cabo de la Vela to the Gulf of Darien; Ojeda landed at Cartagena in 1510, and sustained a defeat from the natives, in which his lieutenant, Juan de la Cosa, was killed. After another reverse on the east side of the Gulf of Darien Ojeda returned to Hispaniola and died there. The Spaniards in the Gulf of Darien were left by Ojeda under the command of Francisco Pizarro, the future conqueror of Peru. After suffering much from famine and disease, Pizarro resolved to leave, and embarked the survivors in small vessels, but outside the harbour they met a ship which proved to be that of Martin Fernandez Enciso, Ojeda’s partner, coming with provisions and reinforcements. One of the crew of Enciso’s ship, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, the future discoverer of the Pacific Ocean, induced his commander to form a settlement on the other side of the Gulf of Darien. The soldiers became discontented and deposed Enciso, who was a man of learning and an accomplished cosmographer. His workSuma de Geografia, which was printed in 1519, is the first Spanish book which gives an account of America. Vasco Nuñez, the new commander, entered upon a career of conquest in the neighbourhood of Darien, which ended in the discovery of the Pacific Ocean on the 25th of September 1513. Vasco Nuñez was beheaded in 1517 by Pedrarias de Avila, who was sent out to supersede him. This was one of the greatest calamities that could have happened to South America; for the discoverer of the South sea was on the point of sailing with a little fleet into his unknown ocean, and a humane and judicious man would probably have been the conqueror of Peru, instead of the cruel and ignorant Pizarro. In the year 1519 Panama was founded by Pedrarias; and the conquest of Peru by Pizarro followed a few years afterwards. Hernan Cortes overran and conquered Mexico from 1518 to 1521, and the discovery and conquest of Guatemala by Alvarado, the invasion of Florida by De Soto, and of Nueva Granada by Quesada, followed in rapid succession. The first detailed account of the west coast of South America was written by a keenly observant old soldier, Pedro de Cieza de Leon, who was travelling in South America from 1533 to 1550, and published his story at Seville in 1553.The great desire of the Spanish government at that time was to find a westward route to the Moluccas. For this purpose Juan Diaz de Solis was despatched in October 1515, and in January 1516 he discovered the mouth of the Rio de laPacific Ocean.Plata. He was, however, killed by the natives, and his ships returned. In the following year the Portuguese Ferdinando Magalhães, familiarly known as Magellan, laid before Charles V., at Valladolid, a scheme for reaching the Spice Islands by sailing westward. He started on the 21st of September 1519, entered the strait which now bears his name in October 1520, worked his way through between Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, and entered onthe vast Pacific which he crossed without sighting any of its innumerable island groups. This was unquestionably the greatest of the voyages which followed from the impulse of Prince Henry, and it was rendered possible only by the magnificent courage of the commander in spite of rebellion, mutiny and starvation. It was the 6th of March 1521 when he reached the Ladrone Islands. Thence Magellan proceeded to the Philippines, and there his career ended in an unimportant encounter with hostile natives. Eventually a Biscayan named Sebastian del Cano, sailing home by way of the Cape of Good Hope, reached San Lucar in command of the “Victoria” on the 6th of September 1522, with eighteen survivors; this one ship of the squadron which sailed on the quest succeeded in accomplishing the first circumnavigation of the globe. Del Cano was received with great distinction by the emperor, who granted him a globe for his crest, and the mottoPrimus circumdedisti me.While the Spaniards were circumnavigating the world and completing their knowledge of the coasts of Central and South America, the Portuguese were activelyPortuguese in Africa and the East.engaged on similar work as regards Africa and the East Indies.With Abyssinia the mission of Covilhão led to further intercourse. In April 1520 Vasco da Gama, as viceroy of the Indies, took a fleet into the Red sea, and landed an embassy consisting of Dom Rodriguez de Lima and Father Francisco Alvarez, a priest whose detailed narrative is the earliest and not the least interesting account we possess of Abyssinia. It was not until 1526 that the embassy was dismissed; and not many years afterwards the negus entreated the help of the Portuguese against Mahommedan invaders, and the viceroy sent an expeditionary force, commanded by his brother Cristoforo da Gama, with 450 musketeers. Da Gama was taken prisoner and killed, but his followers enabled the Christians of Abyssinia to regain their power, and a Jesuit mission remained in the country. The Portuguese also established a close connexion with the kingdom of Congo on the west side of Africa, and obtained much information respecting the interior of the continent. Duarte Lopez, a Portuguese settled in the country, was sent on a mission to Rome by the king of Congo, and Pope Sixtus V. caused him to recount to his chamberlain, Felipe Pigafetta, all he had learned during the nine years he had been in Africa, from 1578 to 1587. This narrative, under the title ofDescription of the Kingdom of Congo, was published at Rome by Pigafetta in 1591. A map was attached on which several great equatorial lakes are shown, and the empire of Monomwezi or Unyamwezi is laid down. The most valuable work on Africa about this time is, however, that written by the Moor Leo Africanus in the early part of the 16th century. Leo travelled extensively in the north and west of Africa, and was eventually taken by pirates and sold to a master who presented him to Pope Leo X. At the pope’s desire he translated his work on Africa into Italian.In Further India and the Malay Archipelago the Portuguese acquired predominating influence at sea, establishing factories on the Malabar coast, in the Persian Gulf, at Malacca, and in the Spice Islands, and extending their commercial enterprises from the Red sea to China. Their missionaries were received at the court of Akbar, and Benedict Goes, a native of the Azores, was despatched on a journey overland from Agra to China. He started in 1603, and, after traversing the least-known parts of Central Asia, he reached the confines of China. He appears to have ascended from Kabul to the plateau of the Pamir, and thence onwards by Yarkand, Khotan and Aksu. He died on the journey in March 1607; and thus, as one of the brethren pronounced his epitaph, “seeking Cathay he found heaven.”The activity and love of adventure, which became a passion for two or three generations in Spain and Portugal, spread to other countries. It was the spirit of the age; and England, Holland and France were fired by it. English enterpriseEnglish, Dutch and French.was first aroused by John and Sebastian Cabot, father and son, who came from Venice and settled at Bristol in the time of Henry VII. The Cabots received a patent in 1496, empowering them to seek unknown lands; and John Cabot discovered Newfoundland and part of the coast of America. Sebastian afterwards made a voyage to Rio de la Plata in the service of Spain, but he returned to England in 1548 and received a pension from Edward VI. At his suggestion a voyage was undertaken for the discovery of a north-east passage to Cathay, with Sir Hugh Willoughby as captain-general of the fleet and Richard Chancellor as pilot-major. They sailed in May 1553, but Willoughby and all his crew perished on the Lapland coast. Chancellor, however, was more fortunate. He reached the White Sea, performed the journey overland to Moscow, where he was well received, and may be said to have been the founder of the trade between Russia and England. He returned to Archangel and brought his ship back in safety to England. On a second voyage, in 1556, Chancellor was drowned; and three subsequent voyages, led by Stephen Burrough, Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman, in small craft of 50 tons and under, carried on an examination of the straits which lead into the Kara sea.The French followed closely on the track of John Cabot, and Norman and Breton fishermen frequented the banks of Newfoundland at the beginning of the 16th century. In 1524 Francis I. sent Giovanni da Verazzano of Florence on an expedition of discovery to the coast of North America; and the details of his voyage were embodied in a letter addressed by him to the king of France from Dieppe, in July 1524. In 1534 Jacques Cartier set out to continue the discoveries of Verazzano, and visited Newfoundland and the Gulf of St Lawrence. In the following year he made another voyage, discovered the island of Anticosti, and ascended the St Lawrence to Hochelaga, now Montreal. He returned, after passing two winters in Canada; and on another occasion he also failed to establish a colony. Admiral de Coligny made several unsuccessful endeavours to form a colony in Florida under Jean Ribault of Dieppe, René de Laudonnière and others, but the settlers were furiously assailed by the Spaniards and the attempt was abandoned.The reign of Elizabeth is famous for the gallant enterprises that were undertaken by sea and land to discover and bring to light the unknown parts of the earth. The great promoter of geographical discovery in the Elizabethan period wasThe Elizabethan era.Richard Hakluyt (1553-1616), who was active in the formation of the two companies for colonizing Virginia in 1606; and devoted his life to encouraging and recording similar undertakings. He published much, and left many valuable papers at his death, most of which, together with many other narratives, were published in 1622 in the great work of the Rev. Samuel Purchas, entitledHakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes.It is from these works that our knowledge of the gallant deeds of the English and other explorers of the Elizabethan age is mainly derived. The great and splendidly illustrated collections of voyages and travels of Theodorus de Bry and Hulsius served a similar useful purpose on the continent of Europe. One important object of English maritime adventurers of those days was to discover a route to Cathay by the north-west, a second was to settle Virginia, and a third was to raid the Spanish settlements in the West Indies. Nor was the trade to Muscovy and Turkey neglected; while latterly a resolute and successful attempt was made to establish direct commercial relations with India.The conception of the north-western route to Cathay now leads the story of exploration, for the first time as far as important and sustained efforts are concerned, towards the Arctic seas. This part of the story is fully told under the heading ofPolar Regions, and only the names of Martin Frobisher (1576), John Davis (1585), Henry Hudson (1607) and William Baffin (1616) need be mentioned here in order to preserve the complete conspectus of the history of discovery. The Dutch emulated the British in the Arctic seas during this period, directing their efforts mainly towards the discovery of a north-east passage round the northern end of Novaya Zemlya; and William Barents or Barendsz (1594-1597) is the most famous name in this connexion, his boat voyage along the coast of Novaya Zemlya after losing his ship and wintering in a high latitude, being one of the most remarkable achievements in polar annals.Many English voyages were also made to Guinea and the West Indies, and twice English vessels followed in the track of Magellan, and circumnavigated the globe. In 1577 Francis Drake, who had previously served with Hawkins in the West Indies, undertook his celebrated voyage round the world. Reaching the Pacific through the Strait of Magellan, Drake proceeded northward along the west coast of America, resolved to attempt the discovery of a northern passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The coast from the southern extremity of the Californian peninsula to Cape Mendocino had been discovered by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and Francisco de Ulloa in 1539. Drake’s discoveries extended from Cape Mendocino to 48° N., in which latitude he gave up his quest, sailed across the Pacific and reached the Philippine Islands, returning home round the Cape of Good Hope in 1580.
The earliest conceptions of the earth, like those held by the primitive peoples of the present day, are difficult to discover and almost impossible fully to grasp. Early generalizations, as far as they were made from known facts, were usually expressed in symbolic language, and for our present purpose it is not profitable to speculate on the underlying truths which may sometimes be suspected in the old mythological cosmogonies.
The first definite geographical theories to affect the western world were those evolved, or at least first expressed, by the Greeks.1The earliest theoretical problem of geography was theEarly Greek ideas.Flat earth of Homer.form of the earth. The natural supposition that the earth is a flat disk, circular or elliptical in outline, had in the time of Homer acquired a special definiteness by the introduction of the idea of the ocean river bounding the whole, an application of imperfectly understood observations. Thales of Miletus is claimed as the first exponent of the idea of a spherical earth; but, although this does not appear to be warranted, his disciple Anaximander (c.580B.C.) put forward the theory that the earth had the figure of a solid body hanging freely in the centre of the hollow sphere of the starry heavens. The Pythagorean school of philosophers adopted the theory of a spherical earth, but from metaphysical rather than scientific reasons; their convincing argument was that a sphere being the most perfect solid figure was the only one worthy to circumscribe the dwelling-place of man. The division of the sphere into parallel zones and some of the consequences of this generalization seem to have presented themselves to Parmenides (c.450B.C.); but these ideas did not influence the Ionian school of philosophers, who in their treatment of geography preferred to deal with facts demonstrable byHecataeus.Herodotus.travel rather than with speculations. Thus Hecataeus, claimed by H.F. Tozer2as the father of geography on account of hisPeriodos, or general treatise on the earth, did not advance beyond the primitive conception of a circular disk. He systematized the form of the land within the ring of ocean—theοἰκουμένη, or habitable world—by recognizing two continents: Europe to the north, and Asia to the south of the midland sea. Herodotus, equally oblivious of the sphere, criticized and ridiculed the circular outline of theoekumene, which he knew to be longer from east to west than it was broad from north to south. He also pointed out reasons for accepting a division of the land into three continents—Europe, Asia and Africa. Beyond the limits of his personal travels Herodotus applied the characteristically Greek theory of symmetry to complete, in the unknown, outlinesThe idea of symmetry.of lands and rivers analogous to those which had been explored. Symmetry was in fact the first geographical theory, and the effect of Herodotus’s hypothesis that the Nile must flow from west to east before turning north in order to balance the Danube running from west to east before turning south lingered in the maps of Africa down to the time of Mungo Park.3
To Aristotle (384-322B.C.) must be given the distinction of founding scientific geography. He demonstrated the sphericity of the earth by three arguments, two of which could be tested by observation. These were: (1) that the earth must be spherical, becauseAristotle and the sphere.of the tendency of matter to fall together towards a common centre; (2) that only a sphere could always throw a circular shadow on the moon during an eclipse; and (3) that the shifting of the horizon and the appearance of new constellations, or the disappearance of familiar stars, as one travelled from north to south, could only be explained on the hypothesis that the earth was a sphere. Aristotle, too, gave greater definiteness to the idea of zones conceived by Parmenides, who had pictured a torrid zone uninhabitable by reason of heat, two frigid zones uninhabitable by reason of cold, and two intermediate temperate zones fit for human occupation. Aristotle defined the temperate zone as extending from the tropic to the arctic circle, but there is some uncertainty as to the precise meaning he gave to the term “arctic circle.” Soon after his time, however, this conception was clearly established, and with so large a generalization the mental horizon was widened to conceive of a geography which was a science. Aristotle had himself shown that in the southern temperate zone winds similar to those of the northern temperate zone should blow, but from the opposite direction.
While the theory of the sphere was being elaborated the efforts of practical geographers were steadily directed towards ascertaining the outline and configuration of theoekumene, or habitable world, the only portion of the terrestrial surface knownFitting the oekumene to the sphere.to the ancients and to the medieval peoples, and still retaining a shadow of its old monopoly of geographical attention in its modern name of the “Old World.” The fitting of theoekumeneto the sphere was the second theoretical problem. The circular outline had given way in geographical opinion to the elliptical with the long axis lying east and west, and Aristotle was inclined to view it as a very long and relatively narrow band almost encircling the globe in the temperate zone. His argument as to the narrowness of the sea between West Africa and East Asia, from the occurrence of elephants at both extremities, is difficult to understand, although it shows that he looked on the distribution of animals as a problem of geography.
Pythagoras had speculated as to the existence of antipodes, but it was not until the first approximately accurate measurements of the globe and estimates of the length and breadth of theoekumenewere made by Eratosthenes (c.250B.C.) thatProblem of the Antipodes.the fact that, as then known, it occupied less than a quarter of the surface of the sphere was clearly recognized. It was natural, if not strictly logical, that the ocean river should be extended from a narrow stream to a world-embracing sea, and here again Greek theory, or rather fancy, gave its modern name to the greatest feature of the globe. The old instinctive idea of symmetry must often have suggested otheroekumenebalancing the known world in the other quarters of the globe. The Stoic philosophers, especially Crates of Mallus, arguing from the love of nature for life, placed anoekumenein each quarter of the sphere, the three unknown world-islands being those of the Antoeci, Perioeci and Antipodes. This was a theory not only attractive to the philosophical mind, but eminently adapted to promote exploration. It had its opponents, however, for Herodotus showed that sea-basins existed cut off from the ocean, and it is still a matter of controversy how far the pre-Ptolemaic geographers believed in a water-connexion between the Atlantic and Indian oceans. It is quite clear that Pomponius Mela (c.A.D.40), following Strabo, held that the southern temperate zone contained a habitable land, which he designated by the nameAntichthones.
Aristotle left no work on geography, so that it is impossible to know what facts he associated with the science of the earth’s surface. The word geography did not appear before Aristotle, the first use of it being in theΠερὶ κόσμων, which is oneAristotle’s geographical views.of the writings doubtfully ascribed to him, and H. Berger considers that the expression was introduced by Eratosthenes.4Aristotle was certainly conversant with many facts, such as the formation of deltas, coast-erosion, and to a certain extent the dependence of plants and animals on their physical surroundings. He formed a comprehensive theory of the variations of climate with latitude and season, and was convinced of the necessity of a circulation of water between the sea and rivers, though, like Plato, he held that this took place by water rising from the sea through crevices in the rocks, losing its dissolved salts in the process. He speculated on the differences in the character of races of mankind living in different climates, and correlated the political forms of communities with their situation on a seashore, or in the neighbourhood of natural strongholds.
Strabo (c.50B.C.-A.D.24) followed Eratosthenes rather than Aristotle, but with sympathies which went out more to the human interests than the mathematical basis of geography. HeStrabo.compiled a very remarkable work dealing, in large measure from personal travel, with the countries surrounding the Mediterranean. He may be said to have set the pattern which was followed in succeeding ages by the compilers of “political geographies”dealing less with theories than with facts, and illustrating rather than formulating the principles of the science.
Claudius Ptolemaeus (c.A.D.150) concentrated in his writings the final outcome of all Greek geographical learning, and passed it across the gulf of the middle ages by the hands of the Arabs, to form the starting-point of the science in modern times.Ptolemy.His geography was based more immediately on the work of his predecessor, Marinus of Tyre, and on that of Hipparchus, the follower and critic of Eratosthenes. It was the ambition of Ptolemy to describe and represent accurately the surface of theoekumene, for which purpose he took immense trouble to collect all existing determinations of the latitude of places, all estimates of longitude, and to make every possible rectification in the estimates of distances by land or sea. His work was mainly cartographical in its aim, and theory was as far as possible excluded. The symmetrically placed hypothetical islands in the great continuous ocean disappeared, and theoekumeneacquired a new form by the representation of the Indian Ocean as a larger Mediterranean completely cut off by land from the Atlantic. Theterra incognitauniting Africa and Farther Asia was an unfortunate hypothesis which helped to retard exploration. Ptolemy used the wordgeographyto signify the description of the wholeoekumeneon mathematical principles, whilechorographysignified the fuller description of a particular region, andtopographythe very detailed description of a smaller locality. He introduced the simile that geography represented an artist’s sketch of a whole portrait, while chorography corresponded to the careful and detailed drawing of an eye or an ear.5
The Caliph al-Mamūn (c.A.D.815), the son and successor of Hārūn al-Rashīd, caused an Arabic version of Ptolemy’s great astronomical work (Σύνταξις μεγίστη) to be made, which is known as theAlmagest, the word being nothing more than the Gr.μεγίστηwith the Arabic articlealprefixed. The geography of Ptolemy was also known and is constantly referred to by Arab writers. The Arab astronomers measured a degree on the plains of Mesopotamia, thereby deducing a fair approximation to the size of the earth. The caliph’s librarian, Abu Jafar Muhammad Ben Musa, wrote a geographical work, now unfortunately lost, entitledRasm el Arsi(“A Description of the World”), which is often referred to by subsequent writers as having been composed on the model of that of Ptolemy.
The middle ages saw geographical knowledge die out in Christendom, although it retained, through the Arabic translations of Ptolemy, a certain vitality in Islam. The verbal interpretation of Scripture led Lactantius (c.A.D.320) andGeography in the middle ages.other ecclesiastics to denounce the spherical theory of the earth as heretical. The wretched subterfuge of Cosmas (c.A.D.550) to explain the phenomena of the apparent movements of the sun by means of an earth modelled on the plan of the Jewish Tabernacle gave place ultimately to the wheel-maps—the T in an O—which reverted to the primitive ignorance of the times of Homer and Hecataeus.6
The journey of Marco Polo, the increasing trade to the East and the voyages of the Arabs in the Indian Ocean prepared the way for the reacceptance of Ptolemy’s ideas when the sealed books of the Greek original were translated into Latin by Angelus in 1410.
The old arguments of Aristotle and the old measurements of Ptolemy were used by Toscanelli and Columbus in urging a westward voyage to India; and mainly on this account did theRevival of geography.crossing of the Atlantic rank higher in the history of scientific geography than the laborious feeling out of the coast-line of Africa. But not until the voyage of Magellan shook the scales from the eyes of Europe did modern geography begin to advance. Discovery had outrun theory; the rush of new facts made Ptolemy practically obsolete in a generation, after having been the fount and origin of all geography for a millennium.
The earliest evidence of the reincarnation of a sound theoretical geography is to be found in the text-books by Peter Apian and Sebastian Münster. Apian in hisCosmographicus liber, published in 1524, and subsequently edited and added toApianus.by Gemma Frisius under the title ofCosmographia, based the whole science on mathematics and measurement. He followed Ptolemy closely, enlarging on his distinction between geography and chorography, and expressing the artistic analogy in a rough diagram. This slender distinction was made much of by most subsequent writers until Nathanael Carpenter in 1625 pointed out that the difference between geography and chorography was simply one of degree, not of kind.
Sebastian Münster, on the other hand, in hisCosmographia universalisof 1544, paid no regard to the mathematical basis of geography, but, following the model of Strabo, describedMünster.the world according to its different political divisions, and entered with great zest into the question of the productions of countries, and into the manners and costumes of the various peoples. Thus early commenced the separation between what were long called mathematical and political geography, the one subject appealing mainly to mathematicians, the other to historians.
Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries the rapidly accumulating store of facts as to the extent, outline and mountain and river systems of the lands of the earth were put in order by the generation of cartographers of which Mercator was the chief; but the writings of Apian and Münster held the field for a hundred years without a serious rival, unless the many annotated editions of Ptolemy might be so considered. Meanwhile the new facts were the subject of original study by philosophers and by practical men without reference to classical traditions. Bacon argued keenly on geographical matters and was a lover of maps, in which he observed and reasoned upon such resemblances as that between the outlines of South America and Africa.
Philip Cluver’sIntroductio in geographiam universam tam veterem quam novamwas published in 1624. Geography he defined as “the description of the whole earth, so far as it is known to us.” It is distinguished from cosmography by dealingCluverius.with the earth alone, not with the universe, and from chorography and topography by dealing with the whole earth, not with a country or a place. The first book, of fourteen short chapters, is concerned with the general properties of the globe; the remaining six books treat in considerable detail of the countries of Europe and of the other continents. Each country is described with particular regard to its people as well as to its surface, and the prominence given to the human element is of special interest.
A little-known book which appears to have escaped the attention of most writers on the history of modern geography was published at Oxford in 1625 by Nathanael Carpenter, fellow ofCarpenter.Exeter College, with the titleGeographie delineated forth in Two Bookes, containing the Sphericall and Topicall parts thereof. It is discursive in its style and verbose; but, considering the period at which it appeared, it is remarkable for the strong common sense displayed by the author, his comparative freedom from prejudice, and his firm application of the methods of scientific reasoning to the interpretation of phenomena. Basing his work on the principles of Ptolemy, he brings together illustrations from the most recent travellers, and does not hesitate to take as illustrative examples the familiar city of Oxford and his native county of Devon. He divides geography intoThe Spherical Part, or that for the study of which mathematics alone is required, andThe Topical Part, or the description of the physical relations of parts of the earth’s surface, preferring this division to that favoured by the ancient geographers—into general and special. It is distinguished from other English geographical books of the period by confining attention to the principles of geography, and not describing the countries of the world.
A much more important work in the history of geographical method is theGeographia generalisof Bernhard Varenius, a German medical doctor of Leiden, who died at the age of twenty-eight in 1650, the year of the publication of his book.Varenius.Although for a time it was lost sight of on the continent, Sir Isaac Newton thought so highly of this book that he prepared an annotated edition which was published in Cambridge in 1672, with the addition of the plates which had been planned by Varenius, but not produced by the original publishers. “The reason why this great man took so much care in correcting and publishing our author was, because he thought him necessary to be read by his audience, the young gentlemen of Cambridge, while he was delivering lectures on the same subject from the Lucasian Chair.”7The treatise of Varenius is a model of logical arrangement and terse expression; it is a work of science and of genius; one of the few of that age which can still be studied with profit. The English translation renders the definition thus: “Geography is that part ofmixed mathematicswhich explains the state of the earth and of its parts, depending on quantity, viz. its figure, place, magnitude and motion, with the celestial appearances, &c. By some it is taken in too limited a sense, for a bare description of the several countries; and by others too extensively, who along with such a description would have their political constitution.”
Varenius was reluctant to include the human side of geography in his system, and only allowed it as a concession to custom, and in order to attract readers by imparting interest to the sterner details of the science. His division of geography was into two parts—(i.) General or universal, dealing with the earth in general, and explaining its properties without regard to particular countries; and (ii.) Special or particular, dealing with each country in turn from the chorographical or topographical point of view. General geography was divided into—(1) theAbsolutepart, dealing with the form, dimensions, position and substance of the earth, the distribution of land and water, mountains, woods and deserts, hydrography (including all the waters of the earth) and the atmosphere; (2) theRelativepart, including the celestial properties,i.e.latitude, climate zones, longitude, &c.; and (3) theComparativepart, which “considers theparticulars arising from comparing one part with another”; but under this head the questions discussed were longitude, the situation and distances of places, and navigation. Varenius does not treat of special geography, but gives a scheme for it under three heads—(1)Terrestrial, including position, outline, boundaries, mountains, mines, woods and deserts, waters, fertility and fruits, and living creatures; (2)Celestial, including appearance of the heavens and the climate; (3)Human, but this was added out of deference to popular usage.
This system of geography founded a new epoch, and the book—translated into English, Dutch and French—was the unchallenged standard for more than a century. The framework was capable of accommodating itself to new facts, and was indeed far in advance of the knowledge of the period. The method included a recognition of the causes and effects of phenomena as well as the mere fact of their occurrence, and for the first time the importance of the vertical relief of the land was fairly recognized.
The physical side of geography continued to be elaborated after Varenius’s methods, while the historical side was developed separately. Both branches, although enriched by new facts, remained stationary so far as method is concerned until nearly the end of the 18th century. The compilation of “geography books” by uninstructed writers led to the pernicious habit, which is not yet wholly overcome, of reducing the general or “physical” part to a few pages of concentrated information, and expanding the particular or “political” part by including unrevised travellers’ stories and uncritical descriptions of the various countries of the world. Such books were in fact not geography, but merely compressed travel.
The next marked advance in the theory of geography may be taken as the nearly simultaneous studies of the physical earth carried out by the Swedish chemist, Torbern Bergman, acting under the impulse of Linnaeus, and by the GermanBergman.philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Bergman’sPhysical Description of the Earthwas published in Swedish in 1766, and translated into English in 1772 and into German in 1774. It is a plain, straightforward description of the globe, and of the various phenomena of the surface, dealing only with definitely ascertained facts in the natural order of their relationships, but avoiding any systematic classification or even definitions of terms.
The problems of geography had been lightened by the destructive criticism of the French cartographer D’Anville (who had purged the map of the world of the last remnants of traditional fact unverified by modern observations) and renderedKant.richer by the dawn of the new era of scientific travel, when Kant brought his logical powers to bear upon them. Kant’s lectures on physical geography were delivered in the university of Königsberg from 1765 onwards.8Geography appealed to him as a valuable educational discipline, the joint foundation with anthropology of that “knowledge of the world” which was the result of reason and experience. In this connexion he divided the communication of experience from one person to another into two categories—the narrative or historical and the descriptive or geographical; both history and geography being viewed as descriptions, the former a description in order of time, the latter a description in order of space.
Physical geography he viewed as a summary of nature, the basis not only of history but also of “all the other possible geographies,” of which he enumerates five, viz. (1)Mathematical geography, which deals with the form, size and movements of the earth and its place in the solar system; (2)Moral geography, or an account of the different customs and characters of mankind according to the region they inhabit; (3)Political geography, the divisions according to their organized governments; (4)Mercantile geography, dealing with the trade in the surplus products of countries; (5)Theological geography, or the distribution of religions. Here there is a clear and formal statement of the interaction and causal relation of all the phenomena of distribution on the earth’s surface, including the influence of physical geography upon the various activities of mankind from the lowest to the highest. Notwithstanding the form of this classification, Kant himself treats mathematical geography as preliminary to, and therefore not dependent on, physical geography. Physical geography itself is divided into two parts: a general, which has to do with the earth and all that belongs to it—water, air and land; and a particular, which deals with special products of the earth—mankind, animals, plants and minerals. Particular importance is given to the vertical relief of the land, on which the various branches of human geography are shown to depend.
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was the first modern geographer to become a great traveller, and thus to acquire an extensive stock of first-hand information on which an improved system of geography might be founded. The impulseHumboldt.given to the study of natural history by the example of Linnaeus; the results brought back by Sir Joseph Banks, Dr Solander and the two Forsters, who accompanied Cook in his voyages of discovery; the studies of De Saussure in the Alps, and the lists of desiderata in physical geography drawn up by that investigator, combined to prepare the way for Humboldt. The theory of geography was advanced by Humboldt mainly by his insistence on the great principle of the unity of nature. He brought all the “observable things,” which the eager collectors of the previous century had been heaping together regardless of order or system, into relation with the vertical relief and the horizontal forms of the earth’s surface. Thus he demonstrated that the forms of the land exercise a directive and determining influence on climate, plant life, animal life and on man himself. This was no new idea; it had been familiar for centuries in a less definite form, deduced from a priori considerations, and so far as regards the influence of surrounding circumstances upon man, Kant had already given it full expression. Humboldt’s concrete illustrations and the remarkable power of his personality enabled him to enforce these principles in a way that produced an immediate and lasting effect. The treatises on physical geography by Mrs Mary Somerville and Sir John Herschel (the latter written for the eighth edition of theEncyclopaedia Britannica) showed the effect produced in Great Britain by the stimulus of Humboldt’s work.
Humboldt’s contemporary, Carl Ritter (1779-1859), extended and disseminated the same views, and in his interpretation of “Comparative Geography” he laid stress on the importance of forming conclusions, not from the study of one region byRitter.itself, but from the comparison of the phenomena of many places. Impressed by the influence of terrestrial relief and climate on human movements, Ritter was led deeper and deeper into the study of history and archaeology. His monumentalVergleichende Geographie, which was to have made the whole world its theme, died out in a wilderness of detail in twenty-one volumes before it had covered more of the earth’s surface than Asia and a portion of Africa. Some of his followers showed a tendency to look on geography rather as an auxiliary to history than as a study of intrinsic worth.
During the rapid development of physical geography many branches of the study of nature, which had been included in the cosmography of the early writers, the physiography of Linnaeus and even theErdkundeof Ritter, had beenGeography as a natural science.so much advanced by the labours of specialists that their connexion was apt to be forgotten. Thus geology, meteorology, oceanography and anthropology developed into distinct sciences. The absurd attempt was, and sometimes is still, made by geographers to include all natural science in geography; but it is more common for specialists in the various detailed sciences to think, and sometimes to assert, that the ground of physical geography is now fully occupied by these sciences. Political geography has been too often looked on from both sides as a mere summary of guide-book knowledge, useful in the schoolroom, a poor relation of physical geography that it was rarely necessary to recognize.
The science of geography, passed on from antiquity by Ptolemy, re-established by Varenius and Newton, and systematized by Kant, included within itself definite aspects of all those terrestrial phenomena which are now treated exhaustively under the heads of geology, meteorology, oceanography and anthropology; and the inclusion of the requisite portions of the perfected results of these sciences in geography is simply the gathering in of fruit matured from the seed scattered by geography itself.
The study of geography was advanced by improvements in cartography (seeMap), not only in the methods of survey and projection, but in the representation of the third dimension by means of contour lines introduced by Philippe Buache in 1737, and the more remarkable because less obvious invention of isotherms introduced by Humboldt in 1817.
The “argument from design” had been a favourite form of reasoning amongst Christian theologians, and, as worked out by Paley in hisNatural Theology, it served the useful purpose of emphasizing the fitness which exists between all theThe teleological argument in geography.inhabitants of the earth and their physical environment. It was held that the earth had been created so as to fit the wants of man in every particular. This argument was tacitly accepted or explicitly avowed by almost every writer on the theory of geography, and Carl Ritter distinctly recognized and adopted it as the unifying principle of his system. As a student of nature, however, he did not fail to see, and as professor of geography he always taught, that man was in very large measure conditioned by his physical environment. The apparent opposition of the observed fact to the assigned theory he overcame by looking upon the forms of the land and the arrangement of land and sea as instruments of Divine Providence for guiding the destiny as well as for supplying the requirements of man. This was the central theme of Ritter’s philosophy; his religion and his geography were one, and the consequent fervour with which he pursued his mission goes far to account for the immense influence he acquired in Germany.
The evolutionary theory, more than hinted at in Kant’s “Physical Geography,” has, since the writings of Charles Darwin, become the unifying principle in geography. The conception of the development of the plan of the earth from the firstThe theory of evolution in geography.cooling of the surface of the planet throughout the long geological periods, the guiding power of environment on the circulation of water and of air, on the distribution of plants and animals, and finally on the movements of man, give to geography a philosophical dignity and a scientific completenesswhich it never previously possessed. The influence of environment on the organism may not be quite so potent as it was once believed to be, in the writings of Buckle, for instance,9and certainly man, the ultimate term in the series, reacts upon and greatly modifies his environment; yet the fact that environment does influence all distributions is established beyond the possibility of doubt. In this way also the position of geography, at the point where physical science meets and mingles with mental science, is explained and justified. The change which took place during the 19th century in the substance and style of geography may be well seen by comparing the eight volumes of Malte-Brun’sGéographie universelle(Paris, 1812-1829) with the twenty-one volumes of Reclus’sGéographie universelle(Paris, 1876-1895).
In estimating the influence of recent writers on geography it is usual to assign to Oscar Peschel (1826-1875) the credit of having corrected the preponderance which Ritter gave to the historical element, and of restoring physical geography to its old pre-eminence.10As a matter of fact, each of the leading modern exponents of theoretical geography—such as Ferdinand von Richthofen, Hermann Wagner, Friedrich Ratzel, William M. Davis, A. Penck, A. de Lapparent and Elisée Reclus—has his individual point of view, one devoting more attention to the results of geological processes, another to anthropological conditions, and the rest viewing the subject in various blendings of the extreme lights.
The two conceptions which may now be said to animate the theory of geography are the genetic, which depends upon processes of origin, and the morphological, which depends on facts of form and distribution.
Progress of Geographical Discovery
Exploration and geographical discovery must have started from more than one centre, and to deal justly with the matter one ought to treat of these separately in the early ages before the whole civilized world was bound together by the bonds of modern intercommunication. At the least there should be some consideration of four separate systems of discovery—the Eastern, in which Chinese and Japanese explorers acquired knowledge of the geography of Asia, and felt their way towards Europe and America; the Western, in which the dominant races of the Mexican and South American plateaus extended their knowledge of the American continent before Columbus; the Polynesian, in which the conquering races of the Pacific Islands found their way from group to group; and the Mediterranean. For some of these we have no certain information, and regarding others the tales narrated in the early records are so hard to reconcile with present knowledge that they are better fitted to be the battle-ground of scholars championing rival theories than the basis of definite history. So it has come about that the only practicable history of geographical exploration starts from the Mediterranean centre, the first home of that civilization which has come to be known as European, though its field of activity has long since overspread the habitable land of both temperate zones, eastern Asia alone in part excepted.
From all centres the leading motives of exploration were probably the same—commercial intercourse, warlike operations, whether resulting in conquest or in flight, religious zeal expressed in pilgrimages or missionary journeys, or, from the other side, the avoidance of persecution, and, more particularly in later years, the advancement of knowledge for its own sake. At different times one or the other motive predominated.
Before the 14th centuryB.C.the warrior kings of Egypt had carried the power of their arms southward from the delta of the Nile well-nigh to its source, and eastward to the confines of Assyria. The hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt and the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria are rich in records of the movements and achievements of armies, the conquest of towns and the subjugation of peoples; but though many of the recorded sites have been identified, their discovery by wandering armies was isolated from their subsequent history and need not concern us here.
The Phoenicians are the earliest Mediterranean people in the consecutive chain of geographical discovery which joins pre-historic time with the present. From Sidon, and later from its more famous rival Tyre, the merchant adventurers ofThe Phoenicians.Phoenicia explored and colonized the coasts of the Mediterranean and fared forth into the ocean beyond. They traded also on the Red sea, and opened up regular traffic with India as well as with the ports of the south and west, so that it was natural for Solomon to employ the merchant navies of Tyre in his oversea trade. The western emporium known in the scriptures as Tarshish was probably situated in the south of Spain, possibly at Cadiz, although some writers contend that it was Carthage in North Africa. Still more diversity of opinion prevails as to the southern gold-exporting port of Ophir, which some scholars place in Arabia, others at one or another point on the east coast of Africa. Whether associated with the exploitation of Ophir (q.v.) or not the first great voyage of African discovery appears to have been accomplished by the Phoenicians sailing the Red Sea. Herodotus (himself a notable traveller in the 5th centuryB.C.) relates that the Egyptian king Necho of the XXVIth Dynasty (c.600B.C.) built a fleet on the Red Sea, and confided it to Phoenician sailors with the orders to sail southward and return to Egypt by the Pillars of Hercules and the Mediterranean sea. According to the tradition, which Herodotus quotes sceptically, this was accomplished; but the story is too vague to be accepted as more than a possibility.
The great Phoenician colony of Carthage, founded before 800B.C., perpetuated the commercial enterprise of the parent state, and extended the sphere of practical trade to the ocean shores of Africa and Europe. The most celebrated voyage of antiquity undertaken for the express purpose of discovery was that fitted out by the senate of Carthage under the command of Hanno, with the intention of founding new colonies along the west coast of Africa. According to Pliny, the only authority on this point, the period of the voyage was that of the greatest prosperity of Carthage, which may be taken as somewhere between 570 and 480B.C.The extent of this voyage is doubtful, but it seems probable that the farthest point reached was on the east-running coast which bounds the Gulf of Guinea on the north. Himilco, a contemporary of Hanno, was charged with an expedition along the west coast of Iberia northward, and as far as the uncertain references to this voyage can be understood, he seems to have passed the Bay of Biscay and possibly sighted the coast of England.
The sea power of the Greek communities on the coast of Asia Minor and in the Archipelago began to be a formidable rival to the Phoenician soon after the time of Hanno and Himilco, and peculiar interest attaches to the first recorded GreekThe Greeks.voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Pytheas, a navigator of the Phocean colony of Massilia (Marseilles), determined the latitude of that port with considerable precision by the somewhat clumsy method of ascertaining the length of the longest day, and when, about 330B.C., he set out on exploration to the northward in search of the lands whence came gold, tin and amber, he followed this system of ascertaining his position from time to time. If on each occasion he himself made the observations his voyage must have extended over six years; but it is not impossible that he ascertained the approximate length of the longest day in some cases by questioning the natives. Pytheas, whose own narrative is not preserved, coasted the Bay of Biscay, sailed up the English Channel and followed the coast of Britain to its most northerly point. Beyond this he spoke of a land calledThule, which, if his estimate of the length of the longest day is correct, may have been Shetland, but was possibly Iceland; and from some confused statements as to a sea which could not be sailed through, it has been assumed that Pytheas was the first of the Greeks to obtain direct knowledge of the Arctic regions. During this or a second voyage Pytheas entered the Baltic, discovered the coasts where amber is obtained and returned to the Mediterranean. It does not seem that any maritime trade followed these discoveries, and indeed it is doubtful whether his contemporaries accepted the truth of Pytheas’s narrative; Strabo four hundred years later certainly did not, but the critical studies of modern scholars have rehabilitated the Massilian explorer.
The Greco-Persian wars had made the remoter parts of Asia Minor more than a name to the Greek geographers before the time of Alexander the Great, but the campaigns of that conquerorAlexander the Great.from 329 to 325B.C.opened up the greater Asia to the knowledge of Europe. His armies crossed the plains beyond the Caspian, penetrated the wild mountain passes north-west of India, and did not turn back until they had entered on the Indo-Gangetic plain. This was one of the few great epochs of geographical discovery.
The world was henceforth viewed as a very large place stretching far on every side beyond the Midland or Mediterranean Sea, and the land journey of Alexander resulted in a voyage of discovery in the outer ocean from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Tigris, thus opening direct intercourse between Grecian and Hindu civilization. The Greeks who accompanied Alexander described with care the towns and villages, the products and the aspect of the country. The conqueror also intended to open up trade by sea between Europe and India, and the narrative of his general Nearchus records this famous voyage of discovery, the detailed accounts of the chief pilot Onesicritus being lost. At the beginning of October 326B.C.Nearchus left the Indus with his fleet, and the anchorages sought for each night are carefully recorded. He entered the Persian Gulf, and rejoined Alexander at Susa, when he was ordered to prepare another expedition for the circumnavigation of Arabia. Alexander died at Babylon in 323B.C., and the fleet was dispersed without making the voyage.
The dynasties founded by Alexander’s generals, Seleucus, Antiochus and Ptolemy, encouraged the same spirit of enterprise which their master had fostered, and extended geographical knowledge in several directions. Seleucus Nicator established the Greco-Bactrian empire and continued the intercourse with India. Authentic information respecting the great valley of the Ganges was supplied by Megasthenes, an ambassador sent by Seleucus, who reached the remote city of Patali-putra, the modern Patna.
The Ptolemies in Egypt showed equal anxiety to extend the bounds of geographical knowledge. Ptolemy Euergetes (247-222B.C.)rendered the greatest service to geography by the protection andThe Ptolemies.encouragement of Eratosthenes, whose labours gave the first approximate knowledge of the true size of the spherical earth. The second Euergetes and his successor Ptolemy Lathyrus (118-115B.C.) furnished Eudoxus with a fleet to explore the Arabian sea. After two successful voyages, Eudoxus, impressed with the idea that Africa was surrounded by ocean on the south, left the Egyptian service, and proceeded to Cadiz and other Mediterranean centres of trade seeking a patron who would finance an expedition for the purpose of African discovery; and we learn from Strabo that the veteran explorer made at least two voyages southward along the coast of Africa. The Ptolemies continued to send fleets annually from their Red Sea ports of Berenice and Myos Hormus to Arabia, as well as to ports on the coasts of Africa and India.
The Romans did not encourage navigation and commerce with the same ardour as their predecessors; still the luxury of Rome, which gave rise to demands for the varied products of all the countries of the known world, led to an activeThe Romans.trade both by ships and caravans. But it was the military genius of Rome, and the ambition for universal empire, which led, not only to the discovery, but also to the survey of nearly all Europe, and of large tracts in Asia and Africa. Every new war produced a new survey and itinerary of the countries which were conquered, and added one more to the imperishable roads that led from every quarter of the known world to Rome. In the height of their power the Romans had surveyed and explored all the coasts of the Mediterranean, Italy, Greece, the Balkan Peninsula, Spain, Gaul, western Germany and southern Britain. In Africa their empire included Egypt, Carthage, Numidia and Mauritania. In Asia they held Asia Minor and Syria, had sent expeditions into Arabia, and were acquainted with the more distant countries formerly invaded by Alexander, including Persia, Scythia, Bactria and India. Roman intercourse with India especially led to the extension of geographical knowledge.
Before the Roman legions were sent into a new region to extend the limits of the empire, it was usual to send out exploring expeditions to report as to the nature of the country. It is narrated by Pliny and Seneca that the emperor Nero sent out two centurions on such a mission towards the source of the Nile (probably aboutA.D.60), and that the travellers pushed southwards until they reached vast marshes through which they could not make their way either on foot or in boats. This seems to indicate that they had penetrated to about 9° N. Shortly beforeA.D.79 Hippalus took advantage of the regular alternation of the monsoons to make the voyage from the Red Sea to India across the open ocean out of sight of land. Even though this sea-route was known, the author of thePeriplus of the Erythraean Sea, published after the time of Pliny, recites the old itinerary around the coast of the Arabian Gulf. It was, however, in the reigns of Severus and his immediate successors that Roman intercourse with India was at its height, and from the writings of Pausanias (c.174) it appears that direct communication between Rome and China had already taken place.
After the division of the Roman empire, Constantinople became the last refuge of learning, arts and taste; while Alexandria continued to be the emporium whence were imported the commodities of the East. The emperor Justinian (483-565), in whose reign the greatness of the Eastern empire culminated, sent two Nestorian monks to China, who returned with eggs of the silkworm concealed in a hollow cane, and thus silk manufactures were established in the Peloponnesus and the Greek islands. It was also in the reign of Justinian that Cosmas Indicopleustes, an Egyptian merchant, made several voyages, and afterwards composed hisΧριστιανικὴ τοπογραφία(Christian Topography), containing, in addition to his absurd cosmogony, a tolerable description of India.
The great outburst of Mahommedan conquest in the 7th century was followed by the Arab civilization, having its centres at Bagdad and Cordova, in connexion with which geography again received a share of attention. The works of the ancientThe Arabs.Greek geographers were translated into Arabic, and starting with a sound basis of theoretical knowledge, exploration once more made progress. From the 9th to the 13th century intelligent Arab travellers wrote accounts of what they had seen and heard in distant lands. The earliest Arabian traveller whose observations have come down to us is the merchant Sulaiman, who embarked in the Persian Gulf and made several voyages to India and China, in the middle of the 9th century. Abu Zaid also wrote on India, and his work is the most important that we possess before the epoch-making discoveries of Marco Polo. Masudi, a great traveller who knew from personal experience all the countries between Spain and China, described the plains, mountains and seas, the dynasties and peoples, in hisMeadows of Gold, an abstract made by himself of his larger workNews of the Time. He died in 956, and was known, from the comprehensiveness of his survey, as the Pliny of the East. Amongst his contemporaries were Istakhri, who travelled through all the Mahommedan countries and wrote hisBook of Climatesin 950, and Ibn Haukal, whoseBook of Roads and Kingdoms, based on the work of Istakhri, was written in 976. Idrisi, the best known of the Arabian geographical authors, after travelling far and wide in the first half of the 12th century, settled in Sicily, where he wrote a treatise descriptive of an armillary sphere which he had constructed for Roger II., the Norman king, and in this work he incorporated all accessible results of contemporary travel.
The Northmen of Denmark and Norway, whose piratical adventures were the terror of all the coasts of Europe, and who established themselves in Great Britain and Ireland, in France and Sicily, were also geographical explorers in their rough butThe Northmen.practical way during the darkest period of the middle ages. All Northmen were not bent on rapine and plunder; many were peaceful merchants. Alfred the Great, king of the Saxons in England, not only educated his people in the learning of the past ages; he inserted in the geographical works he translated many narratives of the travel of his own time. Thus he placed on record the voyages of the merchant Ulfsten in the Baltic, including particulars of the geography of Germany. And in particular he told of the remarkable voyage of Other, a Norwegian of Helgeland, who was the first authentic Arctic explorer, the first to tell of the rounding of the North Cape and the sight of the midnight sun. This voyage of the middle of the 9th century deserves to be held in happy memory, for it unites the first Norwegian polar explorer with the first English collector of travels. Scandinavian merchants brought the products of India to England and Ireland. From the 8th to the 11th century a commercial route from India passed through Novgorod to the Baltic, and Arabian coins found in Sweden, and particularly in the island of Gotland, prove how closely the enterprise of the Northmen and of the Arabs intertwined. Five-sixths of these coins preserved at Stockholm were from the mints of the Samanian dynasty, which reigned in Khorasan and Transoxiana from aboutA.D.900 to 1000. It was the trade with the East that originally gave importance to the city of Visby in Gotland.
In the end of the 9th century Iceland was colonized from Norway; and about 985 the intrepid viking, Eric the Red, discovered Greenland, and induced some of his Icelandic countrymen to settle on its inhospitable shores. His son, Leif Ericsson, and others of his followers were concerned in the discovery of the North American coast (seeVinland), which, but for the isolation of Iceland from the centres of European awakening, would have had momentous consequences. As things were, the importance of this discovery passed unrecognized. The story of two Venetians, Nicolo and Antonio Zeno, who gave a vague account of voyages in the northern seas in the end of the 13th century, is no longer to be accepted as history.
At length the long period of barbarism which accompanied and followed the fall of the Roman empire drew to a close in Europe. The Crusades had a favourable influence on the intellectual state of the Western nations. Interesting regions,Close of the dark ages.known only by the scant reports of pilgrims, were made the objects of attention and study; while religious zeal, and the hope of gain, combined with motives of mere curiosity, induced several persons to travel by land into remote regions of the East, far beyond the countries to which the operations of the crusaders extended. Among these was Benjamin of Tudela, who set out from Spain in 1160, travelled by land to Constantinople, and having visited India and some of the eastern islands, returned to Europe by way of Egypt after an absence of thirteen years.
Joannes de Plano Carpini, a Franciscan monk, was the head of one of the missions despatched by Pope Innocent to call the chief and people of the Tatars to a better mind. He reached the headquarters of Batu, on the Volga, in FebruaryAsiatic journeys.1246; and, after some stay, went on to the camp of the great khan near Karakorum in central Asia, and returned safely in the autumn of 1247. A few years afterwards, a Fleming named Rubruquis was sent on a similar mission, and had the merit of being the first traveller of this era who gave a correct account of the Caspian Sea. He ascertained that it had no outlet. At nearly the same time Hayton, king of Armenia, made a journey to Karakorum in 1254, by a route far to the north of that followed by Carpini and Rubruquis. He was treated with honour and hospitality, and returned by way of Samarkand and Tabriz, to his own territory. The curious narrative of King Hayton was translated by Klaproth.
While the republics of Italy, and above all the state of Venice, were engaged in distributing the rich products of India and the Far East over the Western world, it was impossible that motives of curiosity, as well as a desire of commercial advantage, should not be awakened to such a degree as to impel some of the merchants to visit those remote lands. Among these were the brothers Polo, who traded with the East and themselves visited Tatary. The recital of their travels fired the youthful imagination of young Marco Polo, son of Nicolo, and he set out for the court of Kublai Khan, with his father and uncle, in 1265. Marco remained for seventeen years in the service of the Great Khan, and was employed on many important missions. Besides what he learnt from his own observation, he collected much information from others concerning countries which he did not visit. He returned to Europe possessed of a vast store of knowledge respecting the eastern parts of the world, and, being afterwards made a prisoner by the Genoese, he dictated the narrative of his travels during his captivity. The work of Marco Polo is the most valuable narrative of travels that appeared during the middle ages, and despite a cold reception and many denials of the accuracy of the record, its substantial truthfulness has been abundantly proved.
Missionaries continued to do useful geographical work. Among them were John of Monte Corvino, a Franciscan monk, Andrew of Perugia, John Marignioli and Friar Jordanus, who visited the west coast of India, and above all Friar Odoric of Pordenone. Odoric set out on his travels about 1318, and his journeys embraced parts of India, the Malay Archipelago, China and even Tibet, where he was the first European to enter Lhasa, not yet a forbidden city.
Ibn Batuta, the great Arab traveller, is separated by a wide space of time from his countrymen already mentioned, and he finds his proper place in a chronological notice after the days of Marco Polo, for he did not begin his wanderings until 1325, his career thus coinciding in time with the fabled journeyings of Sir John Mandeville. While Arab learning flourished during the darkest ages of European ignorance, the last of the Arab geographers lived to see the dawn of the great period of the European awakening. Ibn Batuta went by land from Tangier to Cairo, then visited Syria, and performed the pilgrimages to Medina and Mecca. After exploring Persia, and again residing for some time at Mecca, he made a voyage down the Red sea to Yemen, and travelled through that country to Aden. Thence he visited the African coast, touching at Mombasa and Quiloa, and then sailed across to Ormuz and the Persian Gulf. He crossed Arabia from Bahrein to Jidda, traversed the Red sea and the desert to Syene, and descended the Nile to Cairo. After this he revisited Syria and Asia Minor, and crossed the Black sea, the desert from Astrakhan to Bokhara, and the Hindu Kush. He was in the service of Muhammad Tughluk, ruler of Delhi, about eight years, and was sent on an embassy to China, in the course of which the ambassadors sailed down the west coast of India to Calicut, and then visited the Maldive Islands and Ceylon. Ibn Batuta made the voyage through the Malay Archipelago to China, and on his return he proceeded from Malabar to Bagdad and Damascus, ultimately reaching Fez, the capital of his native country, in November 1349. After a journey into Spain he set out once more for Central Africa in 1352, and reached Timbuktu and the Niger, returning to Fez in 1353. His narrative was committed to writing from his dictation.
The European country which had come the most completely under the influence of Arab culture now began to send forth explorers to distant lands, though the impulse came not from the Moors but from Italian merchant navigators in SpanishSpanish exploration.service. The peaceful reign of Henry III. of Castile is famous for the attempts of that prince to extend the diplomatic relations of Spain to the remotest parts of the earth. He sent embassies to all the princes of Christendom and to the Moors. In 1403 the Spanish king sent a knight of Madrid, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, to the distant court of Timur, at Samarkand. He returned in 1406, and wrote a valuable narrative of his travels.
Italians continued to make important journeys in the East during the 15th century. Among them was Nicolo Conti, who passed through Persia, sailed along the coast of Malabar, visited Sumatra, Java and the south of China, returned by the Red sea, and got home to Venice in 1444 after an absence of twenty-five years. He related his adventures to Poggio Bracciolini, secretary to Pope Eugenius IV.; and the narrative contains much interesting information. One of the most remarkable of the Italian travellers was Ludovico di Varthema, who left his native land in 1502. He went to Egypt and Syria, and for the sake of visiting the holy cities became a Mahommedan. He was the first European who gave an account of the interior of Yemen. He afterwards visited and described many places in Persia, India and the Malay Archipelago, returning to Europe in a Portuguese ship after an absence of five years.
In the 15th century the time was approaching when the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope was to widen the scope of geographical enterprise. This great event was preceded by the general utilization in Europe of the polarity of the magneticPortuguese exploration—Prince Henry the Navigator.needle in the construction of the mariner’s compass. Portugal took the lead along this new path, and foremost among her pioneers stands Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), who was a patron both of exploration and of the study of geographical theory. The great westward projection of the coast of Africa, and the islands to the north-west of that continent, were the principal scene of the work of the mariners sent out at his expense; but his object was to push onward and reach India from the Atlantic. The progress of discovery received a check on his death, but only for a time. In 1462 Pedro de Cintra extended Portuguese exploration along the African coast and discovered Sierra Leone. Fernan Gomez followed in 1469, and opened trade with the Gold Coast; and in 1484 Diogo Cão discovered the mouth of the Congo. The king of Portugal next despatched Bartolomeu Diaz in 1486 to continue discoveries southwards; while, in the following year, he sent Pedro de Covilhão and Affonso de Payva to discover the country of Prester John. Diaz succeeded in rounding the southern point of Africa, which he named Cabo Tormentoso—the Cape of Storms—but King João II., foreseeing the realization of the long-sought passage to India, gave it the stimulating and enduring name of the Cape of Good Hope. Payva died at Cairo; but Covilhão, having heard that a Christian ruler reigned in the mountains of Ethiopia, penetrated into Abyssinia in 1490. He delivered the letter which João II. had addressed to Prester John to the Negus Alexander of Abyssinia, but he was detained by that prince and never allowed to leave the country.
The Portuguese, following the lead of Prince Henry, continued to look for the road to India by the Cape of Good Hope. The same end was sought by Christopher Columbus, following the suggestion of Toscanelli, and under-estimating the diameterColumbus.of the globe, by sailing due west. The voyages of Columbus (1492-1498) resulted in the discovery of the West Indies and North America which barred the way to the Far East. In 1493 the pope, Alexander VI., issued a bull instituting the famous “line of demarcation” running from N. to S. 100 leagues W. of the Azores, to the west of which the Spaniards were authorized to explore and to the east of which the Portuguese received the monopoly of discovery. The direct line of Portuguese exploration resulted in the discovery of the Cape route to India by Vasco da Gama (1498), and in 1500 to the independent discovery of South America by Pedro Alvarez Cabral. The voyages of Columbus and of Vasco da Gama were so important that it is unnecessary to detail their results in this place. SeeColumbus, Christopher;Gama, Vasco da.
The three voyages of Vasco da Gama (who died on the scene of his labours, at Cochin, in 1524) revolutionized the commerce of the East. Until then the Venetians held the carrying tradeVasco da Gama.of India, which was brought by the Persian Gulf and Red sea into Syria and Egypt, the Venetians receiving the products of the East at Alexandria and Beirut and distributing them over Europe. This commerce was a great source of wealth to Venice; but after the discovery of the new passage round the Cape, and the conquests of the Portuguese, the trade of the East passed into other hands.
The discoveries of Columbus awakened a spirit of enterprise in Spain which continued in full force for a century; adventurers flocked eagerly across the Atlantic, and discovery followed discovery in rapid succession. Many of the companionsSpaniards in America.of Columbus continued his work. Vicente Yañez Pinzon in 1500 reached the mouth of the Amazon. In the same year Alonso de Ojeda, accompanied by Juan de la Cosa, from whose maps we learn much of the discoveries of the 16th century navigators, and by a Florentine named Amerigo Vespucci, touched the coast of South America somewhere near Surinam, following the shore as far as the Gulf of Maracaibo. Vespucci afterwards made three voyages to the Brazilian coast; and in 1504 he wrote an account of his four voyages, which was widely circulated, and became the means of procuring for its author at the hands of the cartographer Waldseemüller in 1507 the disproportionate distinction of giving his name to the whole continent. In 1508 Alonso de Ojeda obtained the government of the coast of South America from Cabo de la Vela to the Gulf of Darien; Ojeda landed at Cartagena in 1510, and sustained a defeat from the natives, in which his lieutenant, Juan de la Cosa, was killed. After another reverse on the east side of the Gulf of Darien Ojeda returned to Hispaniola and died there. The Spaniards in the Gulf of Darien were left by Ojeda under the command of Francisco Pizarro, the future conqueror of Peru. After suffering much from famine and disease, Pizarro resolved to leave, and embarked the survivors in small vessels, but outside the harbour they met a ship which proved to be that of Martin Fernandez Enciso, Ojeda’s partner, coming with provisions and reinforcements. One of the crew of Enciso’s ship, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, the future discoverer of the Pacific Ocean, induced his commander to form a settlement on the other side of the Gulf of Darien. The soldiers became discontented and deposed Enciso, who was a man of learning and an accomplished cosmographer. His workSuma de Geografia, which was printed in 1519, is the first Spanish book which gives an account of America. Vasco Nuñez, the new commander, entered upon a career of conquest in the neighbourhood of Darien, which ended in the discovery of the Pacific Ocean on the 25th of September 1513. Vasco Nuñez was beheaded in 1517 by Pedrarias de Avila, who was sent out to supersede him. This was one of the greatest calamities that could have happened to South America; for the discoverer of the South sea was on the point of sailing with a little fleet into his unknown ocean, and a humane and judicious man would probably have been the conqueror of Peru, instead of the cruel and ignorant Pizarro. In the year 1519 Panama was founded by Pedrarias; and the conquest of Peru by Pizarro followed a few years afterwards. Hernan Cortes overran and conquered Mexico from 1518 to 1521, and the discovery and conquest of Guatemala by Alvarado, the invasion of Florida by De Soto, and of Nueva Granada by Quesada, followed in rapid succession. The first detailed account of the west coast of South America was written by a keenly observant old soldier, Pedro de Cieza de Leon, who was travelling in South America from 1533 to 1550, and published his story at Seville in 1553.
The great desire of the Spanish government at that time was to find a westward route to the Moluccas. For this purpose Juan Diaz de Solis was despatched in October 1515, and in January 1516 he discovered the mouth of the Rio de laPacific Ocean.Plata. He was, however, killed by the natives, and his ships returned. In the following year the Portuguese Ferdinando Magalhães, familiarly known as Magellan, laid before Charles V., at Valladolid, a scheme for reaching the Spice Islands by sailing westward. He started on the 21st of September 1519, entered the strait which now bears his name in October 1520, worked his way through between Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, and entered onthe vast Pacific which he crossed without sighting any of its innumerable island groups. This was unquestionably the greatest of the voyages which followed from the impulse of Prince Henry, and it was rendered possible only by the magnificent courage of the commander in spite of rebellion, mutiny and starvation. It was the 6th of March 1521 when he reached the Ladrone Islands. Thence Magellan proceeded to the Philippines, and there his career ended in an unimportant encounter with hostile natives. Eventually a Biscayan named Sebastian del Cano, sailing home by way of the Cape of Good Hope, reached San Lucar in command of the “Victoria” on the 6th of September 1522, with eighteen survivors; this one ship of the squadron which sailed on the quest succeeded in accomplishing the first circumnavigation of the globe. Del Cano was received with great distinction by the emperor, who granted him a globe for his crest, and the mottoPrimus circumdedisti me.
While the Spaniards were circumnavigating the world and completing their knowledge of the coasts of Central and South America, the Portuguese were activelyPortuguese in Africa and the East.engaged on similar work as regards Africa and the East Indies.
With Abyssinia the mission of Covilhão led to further intercourse. In April 1520 Vasco da Gama, as viceroy of the Indies, took a fleet into the Red sea, and landed an embassy consisting of Dom Rodriguez de Lima and Father Francisco Alvarez, a priest whose detailed narrative is the earliest and not the least interesting account we possess of Abyssinia. It was not until 1526 that the embassy was dismissed; and not many years afterwards the negus entreated the help of the Portuguese against Mahommedan invaders, and the viceroy sent an expeditionary force, commanded by his brother Cristoforo da Gama, with 450 musketeers. Da Gama was taken prisoner and killed, but his followers enabled the Christians of Abyssinia to regain their power, and a Jesuit mission remained in the country. The Portuguese also established a close connexion with the kingdom of Congo on the west side of Africa, and obtained much information respecting the interior of the continent. Duarte Lopez, a Portuguese settled in the country, was sent on a mission to Rome by the king of Congo, and Pope Sixtus V. caused him to recount to his chamberlain, Felipe Pigafetta, all he had learned during the nine years he had been in Africa, from 1578 to 1587. This narrative, under the title ofDescription of the Kingdom of Congo, was published at Rome by Pigafetta in 1591. A map was attached on which several great equatorial lakes are shown, and the empire of Monomwezi or Unyamwezi is laid down. The most valuable work on Africa about this time is, however, that written by the Moor Leo Africanus in the early part of the 16th century. Leo travelled extensively in the north and west of Africa, and was eventually taken by pirates and sold to a master who presented him to Pope Leo X. At the pope’s desire he translated his work on Africa into Italian.
In Further India and the Malay Archipelago the Portuguese acquired predominating influence at sea, establishing factories on the Malabar coast, in the Persian Gulf, at Malacca, and in the Spice Islands, and extending their commercial enterprises from the Red sea to China. Their missionaries were received at the court of Akbar, and Benedict Goes, a native of the Azores, was despatched on a journey overland from Agra to China. He started in 1603, and, after traversing the least-known parts of Central Asia, he reached the confines of China. He appears to have ascended from Kabul to the plateau of the Pamir, and thence onwards by Yarkand, Khotan and Aksu. He died on the journey in March 1607; and thus, as one of the brethren pronounced his epitaph, “seeking Cathay he found heaven.”
The activity and love of adventure, which became a passion for two or three generations in Spain and Portugal, spread to other countries. It was the spirit of the age; and England, Holland and France were fired by it. English enterpriseEnglish, Dutch and French.was first aroused by John and Sebastian Cabot, father and son, who came from Venice and settled at Bristol in the time of Henry VII. The Cabots received a patent in 1496, empowering them to seek unknown lands; and John Cabot discovered Newfoundland and part of the coast of America. Sebastian afterwards made a voyage to Rio de la Plata in the service of Spain, but he returned to England in 1548 and received a pension from Edward VI. At his suggestion a voyage was undertaken for the discovery of a north-east passage to Cathay, with Sir Hugh Willoughby as captain-general of the fleet and Richard Chancellor as pilot-major. They sailed in May 1553, but Willoughby and all his crew perished on the Lapland coast. Chancellor, however, was more fortunate. He reached the White Sea, performed the journey overland to Moscow, where he was well received, and may be said to have been the founder of the trade between Russia and England. He returned to Archangel and brought his ship back in safety to England. On a second voyage, in 1556, Chancellor was drowned; and three subsequent voyages, led by Stephen Burrough, Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman, in small craft of 50 tons and under, carried on an examination of the straits which lead into the Kara sea.
The French followed closely on the track of John Cabot, and Norman and Breton fishermen frequented the banks of Newfoundland at the beginning of the 16th century. In 1524 Francis I. sent Giovanni da Verazzano of Florence on an expedition of discovery to the coast of North America; and the details of his voyage were embodied in a letter addressed by him to the king of France from Dieppe, in July 1524. In 1534 Jacques Cartier set out to continue the discoveries of Verazzano, and visited Newfoundland and the Gulf of St Lawrence. In the following year he made another voyage, discovered the island of Anticosti, and ascended the St Lawrence to Hochelaga, now Montreal. He returned, after passing two winters in Canada; and on another occasion he also failed to establish a colony. Admiral de Coligny made several unsuccessful endeavours to form a colony in Florida under Jean Ribault of Dieppe, René de Laudonnière and others, but the settlers were furiously assailed by the Spaniards and the attempt was abandoned.
The reign of Elizabeth is famous for the gallant enterprises that were undertaken by sea and land to discover and bring to light the unknown parts of the earth. The great promoter of geographical discovery in the Elizabethan period wasThe Elizabethan era.Richard Hakluyt (1553-1616), who was active in the formation of the two companies for colonizing Virginia in 1606; and devoted his life to encouraging and recording similar undertakings. He published much, and left many valuable papers at his death, most of which, together with many other narratives, were published in 1622 in the great work of the Rev. Samuel Purchas, entitledHakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes.
It is from these works that our knowledge of the gallant deeds of the English and other explorers of the Elizabethan age is mainly derived. The great and splendidly illustrated collections of voyages and travels of Theodorus de Bry and Hulsius served a similar useful purpose on the continent of Europe. One important object of English maritime adventurers of those days was to discover a route to Cathay by the north-west, a second was to settle Virginia, and a third was to raid the Spanish settlements in the West Indies. Nor was the trade to Muscovy and Turkey neglected; while latterly a resolute and successful attempt was made to establish direct commercial relations with India.
The conception of the north-western route to Cathay now leads the story of exploration, for the first time as far as important and sustained efforts are concerned, towards the Arctic seas. This part of the story is fully told under the heading ofPolar Regions, and only the names of Martin Frobisher (1576), John Davis (1585), Henry Hudson (1607) and William Baffin (1616) need be mentioned here in order to preserve the complete conspectus of the history of discovery. The Dutch emulated the British in the Arctic seas during this period, directing their efforts mainly towards the discovery of a north-east passage round the northern end of Novaya Zemlya; and William Barents or Barendsz (1594-1597) is the most famous name in this connexion, his boat voyage along the coast of Novaya Zemlya after losing his ship and wintering in a high latitude, being one of the most remarkable achievements in polar annals.
Many English voyages were also made to Guinea and the West Indies, and twice English vessels followed in the track of Magellan, and circumnavigated the globe. In 1577 Francis Drake, who had previously served with Hawkins in the West Indies, undertook his celebrated voyage round the world. Reaching the Pacific through the Strait of Magellan, Drake proceeded northward along the west coast of America, resolved to attempt the discovery of a northern passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The coast from the southern extremity of the Californian peninsula to Cape Mendocino had been discovered by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and Francisco de Ulloa in 1539. Drake’s discoveries extended from Cape Mendocino to 48° N., in which latitude he gave up his quest, sailed across the Pacific and reached the Philippine Islands, returning home round the Cape of Good Hope in 1580.