and Queen Elizabeth furnished a ship of 180 tons, | little vessels (the Sunshine and Moonshine), to with which and two smaller craft he again sailed in May, 1577. Passing Friesland, he steered for Labrador, and touched at the strait which still | bears his name. He passed up this inlet in a boat, supposing the land on his left to be America, and that on his right Asia. The strait being cleared of ice by a N. W. blow, he sailed westward for 30 leagues, confidently supposing that it led to the Pacific. Ice beginning to form around the ships, it was considered hopeless, for the season, to proceed further on the (imaginary) voyage to China; and therefore the squadron took on board about 200 tons of the glittering dross previously discovered, and returned to England. Strange to say, the golden delusion was not yet dispelled. Scientific men, appointed by the queen, pronounced the ore genuine, and the passage to India feasible. Honors and rewards were lavished upon the fortunate adventurer without stint, and fifteen vessels were soon placed at his disposal, with which he sailed once more. The fleet encountered great dangers from tempests and icebergs, and at last entered a great strait to the westward, probably the chief entrance to Hudson's Bay; but the fears of his associates compelled the return of the squadron without accomplishing any thing worthy of its magnitude. The worthlessness of the trash he had formerly brought home was by this time discovered, and he could obtain no further aid to second his enterprises. After a life passed in naval adventure and warfare, he perished in 1594 from a wound received on the coast of France. JOHN DAVIS. On the 7th of June, 1585, this excellent and kind-hearted seaman sailed from England with two effect further discoveries. He coasted along the western shores of Greenland to lat. 64°, where he landed, and was soon on friendly terms with the natives whom he astonished not a little by music from a band which he had taken with him. Thence he steered across the great strait which still bears his name, and after touching at Cumberland Island, and making some further explorations, returned home in autumn. He sailed again on the 7th of May following; and after renewing his intercourse with the Esquimaux in Greenland, who ere long began to " practise their devilish nature," he crossed Baffin's Bay. On the 17th July he saw what was supposed to be an extensive coast, diversified with hills, capes, and bays; but, to his horror, found it only a "most mighty and strange quantity of ice." His crew remonstrated against proceeding farther, but he pushed on with his boldest mariners in the Moonshine, until he reached lat. 66° 33′, whence he coasted southward by Labrador, and so made his way to England. The English cod-fishery, since so valuable, may trace its slender beginning to this voyage-Davis having fallen in while returning with immense shoals of these fish. In a third expedition, undertaken in 1587, Davis left his vessels at their former station on the coast of Greenland, and in a pinnace, “so dull that she sayled like a cart drawn by oxen," penetrated northward beyond 720, and made fresh surveys of the two coasts. On returning to his rendezvous, he found that his vessels had deserted him, and, not having much choice left, he safely conducted his slender and ill-sailing little craft to England, where his unexpected arrival created no little excitement; but he was never encouraged to undertake another voyage. GEOGRAPHICAL ADJUNCTS. FOREMOST among these, perhaps, Magnetism is the magnetic needle occurs in the politico-satirical fairly entitled to a high rank. Humboldt considers poem called "La Bible," by Guyot of Provence, it extremely probable that Europe owes the knowl-in 1190, and in the description of Palestine by edge of the northern and southern directing powers Jacobus of Vitry, bishop of Ptolemais, between of the magnetic needle-the use of the mariner's 1204 and 1215. Raymond Lully of Majorca-a compass to the Arabs, who, in turn, were in- singularly ingenious and eccentric man, who was debted for it to the Chinese; and in support of at once a philosophical systematizer and an anahis opinion he states that a Chinese writer, who lytic chemist—a skillful mariner and a successful lived in the earlier half of the second century be- propagator of Christianity-in his book entitled fore our era, alludes to the " magnetic cars" which "Fenix de las Maravillas del Orbe," published in the Emperor Tsing-wang, of the ancient dynasty 1286, remarks that the seamen of his time employed of the Tscheu, had given more than 900 years "instruments of measurements, sea charts, and the earlier to the ambassadors from Tunkin and magnetic needle." The early voyages of the CaCochin-China, that they might not miss their way talans to the north coast of Scotland and the when returning home. In the third century of western shores of tropical Africa (Don Jayme our era another Chinese writer described the Ferrer reaching the mouth of the Rio de Ouro in manner in which the property of pointing with one August, 1367), and the discovery of the Azores end towards the south may be imparted to an iron (the Bracier Islands on the Atlas of Picigano, rod by a series of methodical blows. (Owing to 1367), by the Northmen, prove that the open the ordinary southern direction of navigation at Western Ocean was navigated long before the that period, the south pointing of the magnet is time of Columbus. To him, however, is due, not always the one especially mentioned.) A century only the merit of having been the first to discover later, under the dynasty of Tsin, Chinese ships a line without magnetic variation, but also of employed the magnet to guide their course safely having excited a taste for the study of terrestrial across the open sea; and it was by means of these magnetism in Europe, by means of his observations vessels that the knowledge of the compass was on the progressive increase of western declination carried to India, and from thence to the eastern in receding from that line. On the 13th of Sepcoasts of Africa. The Arabic designations zohron tember, 1492, he remarked: "240 E. of the island and aphron (south and north), which Vicenzius of Corvo, the magnetic variation changed, and of Beaurais gives in his "Mirror of Nature" to passed from N. E. to N. W." The fact that althe two ends of the magnetic needle, indicate, like most every where the ends of a freely-moving many Arabic names of stars which we still employ, magnetic needle do not point exactly to the geothe channel and the people from whom western graphical north and south poles, must have been countries received the elements of their knowledge. repeatedly recognized, even with very imperfect In Christian Europe the first mention of the use of instruments, in the Mediterranean, and at all places where, in the twelfth century, the declination | of the periodical movement of the magnetic line amounted to more than eight or ten degrees. without declination, basing it upon a large numThe cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz, one ber of existing observations of declination of very of the instructors of Charles the Fifth, undertook unequal value, by Baffin, Hudson, James Hall, (certainly with very imperfect observations) to and Schouten. In order to test this theory, and draw up the first gencral variation chart in the render it more perfect by the aid of new and more year 1530, and therefore 150 years before Halley. exact observations, the English government perThe advance or movement of the magnetic mitted him to make three voyages (1698–1702) lines, the knowledge of which has been generally in the Atlantic ocean in a vessel under his own ascribed to Gassendi, was not even conjectured by command, in one of which he reached 52° S. lat., William Gilbert, the earliest classical writer on and this constituted an epoch in the history of terrestrial magnetism, although Acosta, "from the telluric magnetism. Its result was the construcinstruction of Portuguese navigators," had at a tion of a general variation chart, wherein the much earlier period assumed that there were four points at which navigators had found an equal lines without declination over the earth's surface. amount of variation were connected together by (These four lines without variation led Halley, by curved lines. As no phenomenon can be thorthe contests between Henry Bond and Beckbor-oughly investigated by a careful observer without row, to the theory of four magnetic poles). No being considered in its relation to other phesooner was the dipping-needle invented in England by Robert Norman (1576), than Gilbert boasted that, by means of this instrument, he could determine a ship's place in dark, starless nights; and Humboldt, at a much later period, showed from his own observations in the Pacific, that, under certain local relations-as, for instance, during the season of constant mist on the coast of Peruthe latitude might be determined from the magnetic inclination with sufficient accuracy for the purposes of navigation. nomena, Halley, on returning to England, hazarded the conjecture that the Northern Light was of a magnetic origin, and Farraday's brilliant discovery (the evolution of light by magnetic force) has since raised this hypothesis, enounced as early as 1714, to empirical certainty. LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE. The ancient misconception of the figure of the earth has inadvertantly given to modern times two terms which have no proper reference to the subOn the remarkable chart of America appended jects to which they are applied-namely, latitude to the edition of the geography of Ptolemy, pub- and longitude. The first of these terms is literally lished at Rome in 1508, the magnetic pole is defined as breadth, width, extent from side to marked as an insular mountain north of Gruent-side," and the second is, "properly, length." If, lant (Greenland), which is represented as a part as is asserted, they were, at the time of their of Asia; but Martin Cortez and Livio Sanuto adoption, significant of the supposed figure of the place it farther to the south. earth, they evidently cannot be strictly applicable to the measurement of a sphere, to which their present use is only referred; but as time and In 1683 Edmund Halley sketched his theory of four magnetic poles or points of convergence, and "ancient usage" have given them a fixed meaning, | and her colonies, was the stadium of 600 Attic no inconvenience can result from continuing to feet. The exact length of the Attic foot has employ them. It is more than probable, how-been recovered from the dimensions of the Parever, that this misnomer may be justly ascribed thenon at Athens, which structure is styled by to Ptolemy, who fixed his first méridian at the Plutarch "Hecatompedon" (the hundred-footed); Fortunate Isles, (now the Canaries,) because it and the result is, that the Greek foot was equal to was the westernmost limit of the countries known 12-1375 English inches, and hence the length of in his time; and as their extent from E. to W. the stadium would be 606 feet 9 inches. This was more considerable than from N. to S., the being the precise length of the foot-race in the former received the name of longitude, and the Olympic games-the distance between the startlatter that of latitude. In order to secure a uni- ing and the winning posts-gave rise to the term form manner of expressing longitudes in French" Olympic stadium;" and this is also the precise geography, Louis XIII. ordered, by an express length of all the stadia of Greece, which are very declaration, that the first meridian should be clearly defined to have consisted of 600 Greek or placed in the Isle of Faroe, the most western of 625 Roman feet. According to Plutarch, the the Canaries. The Dutch fixed their first meridian Roman milliare, or mille passuum, (equal to 5,000 at the Peak of Teneriffe, a mountain situated in Roman feet,) was little less than 8 Greek stadia. the island of that name, and then esteemed the The Roman foot, taken from extant Roman meahighest in the world; but the most natural and surements, is equivalent to 11-65 English inches; the most commodious point of departure, with re- consequently, the Roman mile was equal to 4,854 spect to maps of the world, was that of Gerard English feet, which is equal to 8 stadia, and 25 Mercator, a famous geographer of the sixteenth Roman feet were equal to 24 Greek feet nearly. century, who chose the meridian which passes The length of these measures in English yards, through the island Del Corvo, one of the Azores, feet, and inches, is given in the following table: because in his time it was the line on which the magnetic needle suffered no variation. ANCIENT MEASUREMENTS. Stadium, according to Aristotle's measure- YARDS. FT. INCHES. 109 1 2-26991 Stadium of 7% to the Roman mile....... The Roman foot (pes)....... It is necessary to a proper comprehension of Olympic (the correct) stadium........ ancient geography, that the principal measures used in former times should be fully understood. The true length of the stadium in use before the third century of the Christian era, has been the subject of much controversy, which has resulted in the conclusion that there were stadia of different lengths, in different ages, and in different regions. It is pretty well established, however, that the measure of distance in ancient Greece Hand's Breadth... 0 8-648 0 0.912 7 3.552 ANCIENT NOTIONS OF EUROPE. Ir is not here proposed to enter into any extended detail in regard to the countries or people of antiquity; and this is rendered the more unnecessary, as the various phases which nearly all of them have assumed at different periods, will be noticed incidentally in other portions of our work. In this division, we shall only cursorily glance at the limited ideas which prevailed in early times, and touch briefly upon what was known as the Europe of antiquity and its two most prominent people. It has been truly said that "early ancient geography lay in a very narrow compass." Greece and Italy were the extent north and west, and the Indies on the east. The Persian Gulf, the Caspian, the Euxine, and the Mediterranean bounded the countries consecrated in Ancient History, and which extended over 20 degrees of longitude, or about 900 miles, by 12 degrees of latitude, or over 1800 miles. Arabia and Egypt lay to the south-west, and Chaldea bordered on Arabia, south of the Euphrates; Babylonia lay between it, on the Tigris; Assyria was in both; Media to the west, and Parthia to the north; Syria lay to the west, and its extent was but 400 miles long, and about 100 wide. The priests taught that the Temple of Apollo at Delphos was the centre of the world; beyond the Archipelago and the Levant, was all fable; and they believed that the whole plain of the earth might be viewed from any very high mountain! A volume of no circumscribed dimensions might be filled by a mere enumeration of the vague and absurd teachings of this reputedly infallible class; but as we have "metal more attractive" for our readers, we shall spare them any further details of the ignorance and stupidity which generally prevailed, and confine ourselves to facts of more positive value. ANCIENT EUROPE. EUROPE (Expón) occurs for the first time in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, where it does not indicate the continent, but simply the main-land of Hellas proper, in opposition to Peloponnesus and the neighboring islands. Herodotus is the first writer who uses it in the sense of one of the divisions of the world, and he considers it to be derived from Europa, the daughter of Agenor, king of Tyre, although he does not seem perfectly satisfied of the fact. Another learned author asserts with some confidence that the "continent of Europe derives its name from the worship of Eur-op, the Serpent of the Sun;" while Professor Anthon, in our day, regards the name as of Phoenician origin, denoting the " Evening Land" that is, the land of sunset or gloom, in opposition to Asia, the " Land of Light.” In earlier times the River Phasis was usually supposed to be its boundary, and sometimes even the Araxes and the Caspian Sea; but at a later period the River Tanaïs and the Palus Mæotis were usually regarded as the boundaries between Asia and Europe. The north of Europe was little known to the ancients, but it was generally believed, at least in later times, that it was bounded on the north by the Frozen Ocean. Ptolemy's boundaries are in brief: N. by the Northern Ocean, W. by the Atlantic, S. by the Mediter |