NAVIGATION AND PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY It may, perhaps, be not unadvisable to close the gene ralities in the first section of this little work with a brief sketch of the progress of navigation, from the first limited efforts of the early navigators from port to port in the Mediterranean to the present time, when, with but a tiny needle for his guide, the navigator boldly crosses and recrosses the widest expanses of the ocean, undeterred by any of the doubts and fears which beset the ancient mariners on losing sight of the land. We shall again advert more particularly to this portion of the subject in the particular description of each ocean ; meanwhile the main features in the history of navigation will suffice.
The ancients firmly believed the earth to be flat, and of a circular form, bounded on each side by an impassable ocean. The Mediterranean was the only known sea. The Greeks fondly imagined their country to be the centre of the whole world ; the Danube on the north, Africa on the south, the Straits of Gibraltar on the west, and Asia Minor on the east, forming the limits in each direction. It fell to the ad venturous navigators of Phoenicia and Carthage to push boldly past the Pillars of Hercules into the broad Atlantic, and thus the Canary and British Islands, and intervening tracts of Europe and Africa, became known. The military operations of Alexander widened the limit eastward as fax as India. One philosopher, at least, in these early times, Aristotle, conceived the idea of the earth's rotundity, and the consequent possibility of reaching India by sailing west. In the time of Strabo, the known world embraced the north of Africa ; Europe to the Atlantic on the west, the Baltic on the north, and the Caspian on the east ; Asia as far as the Ganges and Ceylon and the Persian Gulf on the south—the whole surrounded by a vast ocean. The Roman conquests greatly favoured the progress of discovery in almost every direc tion. Ptolemy and succeeding geographers gradually obtained knowledge of China, Siam, and other Asiatic countries ; the Scandinavian "Vikings" brought Northern Europe into notice; Marco Polo travelled as far as China in 1271.
It will be observed that the progress of discovery thus far was mostly by land, but commercial rivalry between the great maritime nations of Europe led to the dispatch of expe ditions of discovery by sea. Portuguese vessels discovered the Azores in 1439, and Cape Verde Islands in 1456 ; sixteen years later the Equator was crossed ; and in 1486 Diaz sighted the Cape of Good Hope. The lull in further progress south was more than compensated by the greatest discovery yet made to the west. The Atlantic was crossed by Columbus, who hoped thus to reach India, and on the 12th of October, 1492, the Bahamas were sighted; and, seven years later, it was generally known that two great continents lay to the north and south of the newly-discovered chain of islands. The Cape of Good Hope was doubled in 1497 ; the way by sea to India was opened, and the discovery and exploration of the coasts of south-eastern Asia was rapidly accomplished—Further India, the Malay Archipelago, China, and Japan being successively visited before 1542.
The exploration of the northern shores of America was carried on energetically by the British—Newfoundland, Labrador, &c., being discovered by Cabot and Corteral ; the
Spaniards devoted themselves to Central and South America; Magellan in 1520 threaded the strait which still bears his name, and pushed boldly across the Pacific to the Philippines and the Moluccas, returning to Europe by way of the Cape of Good Hope, being thus the first to circumnavigate the globe. Discovery and conquest went hand in hand, and thus the splendid colonial possessions of Spain gradually extended, until nearly the whole of the American continent south of Mexico owned its sway, and contributed to its wealth.
The exploration of the Pacific shores dates from 1513, when Balboa first saw it from the hills of Panama ; Chili and California soon after resounded with the shouts of enthusiastic voyagers. The northern seas, cold and inhospitable, offered little inducement compared with the silver mines of Mexico and the gold-fields of Peru. But, though later, the frozen arctic regions were finally added to the map of the World; the English first seizing Nova Zembla, the Russians Kamtchatka and Behring's Strait, the latter being first navigated in 1722. Thence sprung up the idea of a "north-east passage" from the North Atlantic into the Pacific, round the northern shores of Europe and Asia, which the recent voyage of the Vega has shown to be practicable in summer. The "North-west Passage" through the Arctic Archipelago remained undiscovered until 1850, when Captain McClure succeeded in piercing the generally ice-bound channels. To the south, adventurous navigators came in sight of the island-continent of Australia, subsequently explored more minutely by the Dutch and English. The north-east coast of Asia, and the north-western shores of America, and the nu merous archipelagos in the Pacific, were successively explored by Cook, La Perouse, and other famous navigators, and thus gradually the exact position and contour of the land masses became accurately known.
In the present century, the numerous voyages, directly scientific or purely commercial in their object, have all con tributed to our geographical knowledge to such an extent that scarcely any portion of the open sea can be said to be untraversed. The probability of reaching the supposed open sea at the Pole has induced English, American, Swedish, and Austrian navigators to imperil their lives in futile attempts to penetrate the as yet impenetrable barrier of ice which seems to surround the immediate neighbourhood of the North Pole. The African continent, of the interior of which not so long ago nothing was definitely known, has attracted many explorers; the names of Livingstone, Speke, Grant, Stanley, Cameron, and others, are well known in connection with the persistent and successful attempts to solve the problem of the physical conformation of this part of the globe. The entirely or imperfectly known tracts in Central Asia are also being gradually explored by the Russians from the north and the British from the south. Indeed, so energetic is the prose cution of both Asiatic and African exploration, that probably in less than fifty years hence both these continents will be comparatively as well known as Europe or North America.