America, the Magellanic, and a great part of the interior of Africa,
was entirely unknown to them. They knew not that the torrid zone was
inhabited, although they had navigated around Africa, for it is 2200
years since Neco, king of Egypt, gave vessels to the Phenicians, who
sailed along the Red Sea, coasted round Africa, doubled the Cape of Good
Hope, and having employed two years in this voyage, the third year they
entered the straits of Gibraltar.[163:A] The ancients were unacquainted
with the property of the loadstone, if turned towards the poles,
although they knew that it attracted iron. They were ignorant of the
general cause of the flux and reflux of the sea, nor were they certain
the ocean surrounded the globe; some indeed suspected it might be so,
but with so little foundation, that no one dared to say, or even
conjecture, it was possible to make a voyage round the world. Magellan
was the first who attempted it in the year 1519, and accomplished the
great voyage in 1124 days. Sir Francis Drake was the second in 1577, and
he performed it in 1056 days; afterwards Thomas Cavendish made this
great voyage in 777 days, in the year 1586. These celebrated navigators
were the first who demonstrated physically the sphericity and the
extent of the earth's circumference; for the ancients had no conception
of the extent of this circumference, although they had travelled a great
deal. The trade winds, so useful in long voyages, were also unknown to
them; therefore we must not be surprised at the little progress they
made in geography. Notwithstanding the knowledge we have acquired by the
aid of mathematical sciences, and the discovery of navigators, many
things remain still unsettled, and vast countries undiscovered. Almost
all the land on the side of the Atlantic pole is unknown to us; we only
know that there is some, and that it is separated from all the other
continents by the ocean. Much land also remains to be discovered on the
side of the Arctic pole, and it is to be regretted that for more than a
century the ardour of discovering new countries is extremely abated.
European governments seem to prefer, and possibly with reason,
increasing the value of those countries we are acquainted with to the
glory of conquering new ones.
Nevertheless, the discovery of the southern continent would be a great
object of curiosity, and might be useful. We have discovered only some
few of its coasts; those navigators who have attempted this discovery,
have always been stopt by the ice. The thick fogs, which are in those
latitudes, is another obstacle; yet, in defiance of these
inconveniencies, it is probable that by sailing from the Cape of Good
Hope at different seasons, we might at last discover a part of these
lands, which hitherto make a separate world.
There is another method, which possibly might succeed better. The ice
and fogs having hitherto prevented the discovery, might it not be
attempted by the Pacific Sea; sailing from Baldivia, or any other port
on the coast of Chili, and traversing this sea under the 50th degree
south latitude? There is not the least appearance that this navigation
is perilous, and it is probable would be attended with the discovery of
new countries; for what remains for us to know on the coast of the
southern pole, is so considerable, that we may estimate it at a fourth
part of the globe, and of course may contain a continent, as large as
Europe, Asia, and Africa, all together.
As we are not at all acquainted with this part of the globe, we cannot
justly know the proportion between the surface of the earth and that of
the sea; only as much as may be judged by inspection of what is known,
there is more sea than land.
If we would have an idea of the enormous quantity of water which the sea
contains, we must suppose a medium depth, and by computing it only at
200 fathom, or the sixth part of a league, we shall find that there is
sufficient to cover the whole globe to the height of 600 feet of water,
and if we would reduce this water into one mass, it would form a globe
of more than 60 miles diameter.
Navigators pretend, that the latitudes near the south pole are much
colder than those of the north, but there is no appearance that this
opinion is founded on truth, and probably has been adopted, because ice
is found in latitudes where it is scarcely ever seen in the southern
seas; but that may proceed from some particular cause. We find no ice in
April on this side 67 and 68 degrees northern latitude: and the savages
of Arcadia and Canada say, when it is not all melted in that month, it
is a sign the rest of the year will be cold and rainy. In 1725 there may
be said to have been no summer, it rained almost continually; and the
ice of the northern sea was not only not melted in April in the 67th
degree, but even it was found the 15th of June towards the 41st and 42d
degree[167:A].
A great quantity of floating ice appears in the northern sea, especially
at some distance from land. It comes from the Tartarian sea into that of
Nova Zembla, and other parts of the Frozen Ocean. I have been assured by
people of credit, that an English Captain, named Monson, instead of
seeking a passage between the northern land to go to China, directed his
course strait to the pole, and had approached it within two degrees;
that in this course he had found an open sea, without any ice, which
proves that the ice is formed near land, and never in open sea; for if
we should suppose, against all probability, that it might be cold enough
at the pole to freeze over the surface of the sea, it is still not
conceivable how these enormous floating mountains of ice could be
formed, if they did not find a fixed point against land, from whence
afterwards they were loosened by the heat of the sun. The two vessels
which the East India Company sent, in 1739, to discover land in the
South Seas, found ice in the latitude of 47 and 48 degrees, but this
ice was not far from shore, that being in sight although they were
unable to land. This must have been separated from the adjoining lands
of the south pole, and it may be conjectured that they follow the course
of some great rivers, which water the unknown land, the same as the Oby,
Jenisca, and other great floods, which fall into the North Seas, carry
with them the ice, which, during the greatest part of the year, stops up
the straits of Waigat, and renders the Tartarian sea unnavigable by this
course; whereas beyond Nova Zembla, and nearer the poles, where there
are few rivers, and but little land, ice is not so frequently met with,
and the sea is more navigable; so that if they would still attempt the
voyage to China and Japan by the North Seas, we should possibly, to keep
clear from the land and ice, shape our course to the pole, and seek the
open seas, where certainly there is but little or no ice; for it is
known that salt water can, without freezing, become colder than fresh
water when frozen, and consequently the excessive cold of the pole may
possibly render the sea colder than the ice, without the surface being
frozen: so much the more as at 80 or 82 degrees, the surface of the
sea, although mixed with much snow and fresh water, is only frozen near
the shore. By collecting the testimonies of travellers, on the passage
from Europe to China, it appears that one does exist by the north sea;
and the reason it has been so often attempted in vain is, because they
have always feared to go sufficiently far from land, and approach the
pole.
Captain William Barents, who, as well as others, run aground in his
voyage, yet did not doubt but there was a passage, and that if he had
gone farther from shore, he should have found an open sea free from ice.
The Russian navigators, sent by the Czar to survey the north seas,
relate that Nova Zembla is not an island, but belonging to the continent
of Tartary, and that to the north of it is a free and open sea. A Dutch
navigator asserts, that the sea throws up whales on the coasts of Corea
and Japan, which have English and Dutch harpoons on their backs. Another
Dutchman has pretended to have been at the pole, and asserts it is as
warm there as it is at Amsterdam in the middle of the summer. An
Englishman, named Golding, who made more than thirty voyages to
Greenland, related to King Charles II. that two Dutch vessels with which
he had sailed, having found no whales on the coast of the island of
Edges, resolved to proceed farther north, and that upon their return at
the expiration of fifteen days, they told him that they had been as far
as 89 degrees latitude (within one degree of the pole), and that they
found no ice there, but an open deep sea like that of the Bay of Biscay,
and that they shewed him the journals of the two vessels, as a proof of
what they affirmed. In short, it is related in the Philosophical
Transactions that two navigators, who had undertaken the discovery of
this passage, shaped a course 300 leagues to the east of Nova Zembla,
but that the East India Company, who thought it their interest this
passage should not be discovered, hindered them from returning[170:A].
But the Dutch East India Company thought, on the contrary, that it was
their interest to find this passage; having attempted it in vain on the
side of Europe, they sought it by that of Japan, and they would probably
have succeeded, if the Emperor of Japan had not forbidden all strangers
from navigating on the side of the land of Jesso. This passage,
therefore, cannot be found but by sailing to the pole, beyond
Spitzbergen, or by keeping the open sea between Nova Zembla and
Spitzbergen under the 79th degree of latitude. We need not fear to find
it frozen even under the pole itself, for reasons we have alledged; in
fact, there is no example of the sea being frozen at a considerable
distance from the shore; the only example of a sea being frozen entirely
over, is that of the Black Sea, which is narrow, contains but little
salt, and receives a number of rivers from the northern countries, and
which bring ice with them: and if we may credit historians, it was
frozen in the time of the Emperor Copronymus, thirty cubits deep,
without reckoning twenty cubits of snow above the ice. This appears to
be exaggerated, but it is certain that it freezes almost every winter;
whereas the open seas, a thousand leagues nearer the pole, do not freeze
at all: this can only proceed from the saltness, and the little ice
which they receive, in comparison with that transported into the Black
Sea.
This ice, which is looked upon as a barrier that opposes the navigation
near the poles, and the discovery of the southern continent, proves only
that there are large rivers adjacent to the places where it is met
with; and indicates also there are vast continents from whence these
rivers flow; nor ought we to be discouraged at the sight of these
obstacles; for if we consider, we shall easily perceive, this ice must
be confined to some particular places; that it is almost impossible that
it should occupy the whole circle which encompasses, as we suppose, the
southern continent, and therefore we should probably succeed if we were
to direct our course towards some other point of this circle. The
description which Dampier and some others have given of New Holland,
leads us to suspect that this part of the globe is perhaps a part of the
southern lands, and is a country less ancient than the rest of this
unknown continent. New Holland is a low country, without water or
mountains, but thinly inhabited, and the natives without industry; all
this concurs to make us think that they are in this continent nearly
what the savages of Amaconia or Paraguais are in America. We have found
polished men, empires, and kings, at Peru and Mexico, which are the
highest, and consequently the most ancient countries of America.
Savages, on the contrary, are found in the lowest and most modern
countries; therefore we may presume that we should also find men united
by the bands of society in the upper countries, from whence these great
rivers, which bring this prodigious ice to the sea, derive their
sources.
The interior parts of Africa are unknown to us, almost as much as they
were to the ancients: they had, like us, made the tour of that vast
peninsula, but they have left us neither charts, nor descriptions of the
coasts. Pliny informs us, that the tour of Africa was made in the time
of Alexander the Great, that the wrecks of some Spanish vessels had been
discovered in the Arabian sea, and that Hanno, a Carthaginian general,
had made a voyage from Gades to the Arabian sea, and that he had written
a relation of it. Besides that, he says Cornelius Nepos tells us that in
his time one Eudoxus, persecuted by the king Lathurus, was obliged to
fly from his country; that departing from the Arabian gulph, he arrived
at Gades, and that before this time they traded from Spain to Ethiopia
by sea[173:A]. Notwithstanding these testimonies of the ancients, we are
persuaded that they never doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and the course
which the Portuguese took the first to go to the East-Indies, was
looked upon as a new discovery; it will not perhaps, therefore, be
deemed amiss to give the belief of the 9th century on this subject.
"In our time an entire new discovery has been made, which was wholly
unknown to those who lived before us. No one thought, or even suspected,
that the sea, which extends from India to China, had a communication
with the Syrian sea. We have found, according to what I have learnt, in
the sea Roum, or Mediterranean, the wreck of an Arabian vessel,
shattered to pieces by the tempest, some of which were carried by the
wind and waves to the Cozar sea, and from thence to the Mediterranean,
and was at length thrown on the coast of Syria. This proves that the sea
surrounds China and Cila, the extremity of Turqueston and the country of
the Cozars; that it afterwards flows by the strait till it has washed
the coast of Syria. The proof is drawn from the construction of the
vessel; for no other vessels but those of Siraf are built without nails,
which, as was the wreck we speak of, are joined together in a particular
manner, as if they were sewed. Those, of all the vessels of the
Mediterranean and of the coast of Syria, are nailed and not joined in
this manner[175:A]."
To this the translator of this ancient relation adds.--
"Abuziel remarks, as a new and very extraordinary thing, that a vessel
was carried from the Indian sea, and cast on the coasts of Syria. To
find a passage into the Mediterranean, he supposes there is a great
extent above China, which has a communication with the Cozar sea, that
is, with Muscovia. The sea which is below Cape Current, was entirely
unknown to the Arabs, by reason of the extreme danger of the navigation,
and from the continent being inhabited by such a barbarous people, that
it was not easy to subject them, nor even to civilize them by commerce.
From the Cape of Good Hope to Soffala, the Portuguese found no
established settlement of Moors, like those in all the maritime towns as
far as China, which was the farthest place known to geographers; but
they could not tell whether the Chinese sea, by the extremity of Africa,
had a communication with the sea of Barbary, and they contented
themselves with describing it as far as the coast of Zing, or
Caffraria. This is the reason why we cannot doubt but that the first
discovery of the passage of this sea, by the Cape of Good Hope, was made
by the Europeans, under the conduct of Vasco de Gama, or at least some
years before he doubled the Cape, if it is true there are marine charts
of an older date, where the Cape is called by the name of Frontiera du
Africa. Antonio Galvin testifies, from the relation of Francisco de
Sousa Tavares, that, in 1528, the Infant Don Ferdinand shewed him such a
chart, which he found in the monastery of Acoboca, dated 120 years
before, copied perhaps from that said to be in the treasury of St. Mark,
at Venice, which also marks the point of Africa, according to the
testimony of Ramusio, &c."
The ignorance of those ages, on the subject of the navigation around
Africa, will appear perhaps less singular than the silence of the editor
of this ancient relation on the subject of the passages of Herodotus,
Pliny, &c. which we have quoted, and which proves the ancients had made
the tour of Africa.
Be it as it may, the African coasts are now well known; but whatever
attempts have been made to penetrate into the inner parts of the
country, we have not been able to attain sufficient knowledge of it to
give exact relations[177:A]. It might, nevertheless, be of great
advantage, if we were, by Senegal, or some other river, to get farther
up the country and establish settlements, as we should find, according
to all appearances, a country as rich in precious mines as Peru or the
Brazils. It is perfectly known that the African rivers abound with gold,
and as this country is very mountainous, and situated under the equator,
it is not to be doubted but it contains, as well as America, mines of
heavy metals, and of the most compact and hard stones.
The vast extent of north and east Tartary has only been discovered in
these latter times. If the Muscovite maps are just, we are at present
acquainted with the coasts of all this part of Asia; and it appears that
from the point of eastern Tartary to North America, it is not more than
four or five hundred leagues: it has even been pretended that this tract
was much shorter, for in the Amsterdam Gazette, of the 24th of January,
1747, it is said, under the article of Petersburgh, that Mr.
Stalleravoit had discovered one of these American islands beyond
Kamschatca, and demonstrated that we might go thither from Russia by a
shorter tract. The Jesuits, and other missionaries, have also pretended
to have discovered savages in Tartary, whom they had catechised in
America, which should in fact suppose that passage to be still
shorter[178:A]. This author even pretends, that the two continents of
the old and new world join by the north, and says, that the last
navigations of the Japanese afford room to judge, that the tract of
which we have spoken is only a bay, above which we may pass by land from
Asia to America. But this requires confirmation, for hitherto it has
been thought that the continent of the north pole is separated from the
other continents, as well as that of the south pole.
Astronomy and Navigation are carried to so high a pitch of perfection,
that it may reasonably be expected we shall soon have an exact
knowledge of the whole surface of the globe. The ancients knew only a
small part of it, because they had not the mariner's compass. Some
people have pretended that the Arabs invented the compass, and used it a
long time before we did, to trade on the Indian sea, as far as China;
but this opinion has always appeared destitute of all probability; for
there is no word in the Arab, Turkish, or Persian languages, which
signifies the compass; they make use of the Italian word Bossola; they
do not even at present know how to make a compass, nor give the
magnetical quality to the needle, but purchase them from the Europeans.
Father Maritini says, that the Chinese have been acquainted with the
compass for upwards of 3000 years; but if that was the case, how comes
it that they have made so little use of it? Why did they, in their
voyages to Cochinchina, take a course much longer than was necessary?
And why did they always confine themselves to the same voyages, the
greatest of which were to Java and Sumatra? And why did not they
discover, before the Europeans, an infinity of fertile islands,
bordering on their own country, if they had possessed the art of
navigating in the open seas? For a few years after the discovery of
this wonderful property of the loadstone, the Portuguese doubled the
Cape of Good Hope, traversed the African and Indian seas, and
Christopher Columbus made his voyage to America.
By a little consideration, it was easy to divine there were immense
spaces towards the west; for, by comparing the known part of the globe,
as for example, the distance of Spain to China, and attending to the
revolution of the Earth and Heavens, it was easy to see that there
remained a much greater extent towards the west to be discovered, than
what they were acquainted with towards the east. It, therefore, was not
from the defect of astronomical knowledge that the ancients did not find
the new world, but only for want of the compass. The passages of Plato
and Aristotle, where they speak of countries far distant from the
Pillars of Hercules, seem to indicate that some navigators had been
driven by tempest as far as America, from whence they returned with much
difficulty; and it may be conjectured, that if even the ancients had
been persuaded of the existence of this continent, they would not have
even thought it possible to strike out the road, having no guide nor
any knowledge of the compass.
I own, that it is not impossible to traverse the high seas without a
compass, and that very resolute people might have undertaken to seek
after the new world by conducting themselves simply by the stars. The
Astrolabe being known to the ancients, it might strike them they could
leave France or Spain, and sail to the west, by keeping the polar star
always to the right, and by frequent soundings might have kept nearly in
the same latitude; without doubt the Carthaginians, of whom Aristotle
makes mention, found the means of returning from these remote countries
by keeping the polar star to the left; but it must be allowed that a
like voyage would be looked upon as a rash enterprize, and that
consequently we must not be astonished that the ancients had not even
conceived the project.
Previous to Christopher Columbus's expedition, the Azores, the Canaries,
and Madeira were discovered. It was remarked, that when the west winds
lasted a long time, the sea brought pieces of foreign wood on the coast
of these islands, canes of unknown species, and even dead bodies, which
by many marks were discovered to be neither European nor African.
Columbus himself remarked, that on the side of the west certain winds
blew only a few days, and which he was persuaded were land winds; but
although he had all these advantages over the ancients, and the
knowledge of the compass, the difficulties still to conquer were so
great, that there was only the success he met with which could justify
the enterprise. Suppose, for a moment, that the continent of the new
world had been 1000 or 1500 miles farther than it in fact is, a thing
with Columbus could neither know nor foresee, he would not have arrived
there, and perhaps this great country might still have remained unknown.
This conjecture is so much the better founded, as Columbus, although the
most able navigator of his time, was seized with fear and astonishment
in his second voyage to the new world; for as in his first, he only
found some islands, he directed his course more to the south to discover
a continent, and was stopt by currents, the considerable extent and
direction of which always opposed his course, and obliged him to direct
his search to the west; he imagined that what had hindered him from
advancing on the southern side was not currents, but that the sea flowed
by raising itself towards the heavens, and that perhaps both one and the
other touched on the southern side. True it is, that in great
enterprises the least unfortunate circumstance may turn a man's brain,
and abate his courage.
FOOTNOTES:
[163:A] Vide Herodotus, lib. iv.
[167:A] See the Hist. of the Acad. Ann. 1725.
[170:A] See the collection of Northern Voyages, page 200.
[173:A] Vide Pliny, Hist. Nat. Vol. I. lib. 2.
[175:A] See the ancient relations of travels by land to China, page 53
and 54.
[177:A] Since this time, however, great discoveries, have been made;
Mons. Vaillant has given a particular description of the country from
the Cape to the borders of Caffraria; and much information has also been
acquired by the Society for Asiatic Researches.
[178:A] See the Hist. of New France, by the Pere Charlevoix. Vol. III.
page 30 and 31.
ARTICLE VII.
ON THE PRODUCTION OF THE STRATA, OR BEDS OF EARTH.