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dian at the sacred promontory of Iberia, and their longitudinal error increased rapidly as they advanced eastwards. This is no doubt due to their longitudes being based entirely on distances calculated in the itineraries of travellers. Such data of course produced very great distortions in the representations given of the countries on the surface of the globe.

The improvements introduced by Eratosthenes were perfected in principle by Hipparchus, who flourished from 160 to 135 B.C. H was the first astronomer who undertook the arduous task of making a catalogue of the stars and fixing their relative positions. His object was to transmit to posterity a knowledge of the state of the heavens at the period of his observations. The extremities of the imaginary axis round which the heavens perform their diurnal revolutions suggest two fixed points by which the position of the great circle of the celestial sphere, called the celestial equator, is determined. If a great circle be supposed to pass through these points and any star, the position of the star will be ascertained if we measure in degrees and parts of a degree the arc of the meridian circle intercepted between th star and the equator, and also the arc of the equator intercepted between a given point in it and the meridian circle passing through the star. Upon this principle Hipparchus arranged the stars according to their places in the heavens; and the great improvement which he introduced into geography consisted in this, that he applied to the determining of the position of any point on the surface of the earth the same rule which he had introduced in the arrangement of the constellations. Thus he furnished the means of ascertaining the relative positions of places with far greater accuracy than could be obtained from itinerary measurements. He made a considerable number of observations for latitude, and pointed out how longitudes night be determined by observing the eclipses of the sun and moon.

200.

The most ancient maps that have reached modern times are those which illustrate Ptolemy's geography, but an earlier map made for Aristagoras, king of Miletus (500 B.C.), is minutely described by Herodotus. Ptolemy composed his system of geography in the reign of Antoninus Pius, about 150 A.D. His materials consisted of all the itineraries prepared by the Romans, proportions of the height of the gnomon and its shadow at the time of the equinoxes and solstices taken by different astronomers, calculations founded on the length of the longest days, and various reports of travellers and navigators. Ptolemy undertook the task of comparing and reducing this mass of crude material into one system, following the principles laid down by Hipparchus, but which had been neglected during the two centuries and a half since his time, even by such men as Strabo and Pliny. In Ptolemy's work we find for the first time the mathematical principle of the construction of maps, as well as of several projections of the sphere.

The errors of Ptolemy arose from defective information, and the want in many instances, and especially as regards the remote parts of the then known world, of astronomical observations. He adopted the measure of a degree at 500 stadia; and the latitudes along the chief parallel of Rhodes; as first laid down by Eratosthenes, are tolerably correct. But the elements for determining the longitudes were still derived from itineraries, and errors in latitude accumulated to the north and south of the central parallel.

Although Ptolemy was the first scientific geographer whose work has come down to us in a complete form, the earlier labours of Strabo, who lived in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, are of equal value, and we fortunately possess mythe whole of his 17 books. Pliny also devoted two books of his extensive work to geography; and the scattered geographical notices of other ancient writers were collected

into one work of four volumes by Hudson, and published between 1698 and 1712, with notes by Dodwell. From the days of Ptolemy to the revival of letters in Europe, little was done towards the scientific improvement of geographical science, though military and commercial enterprise led to a great extension of knowlege of the earth's surface.

After the dissolation of the Roman empire, Constantinople became the last refuge of arts, taste, and elegance;' while Alexandria continued to be the emporium whence were imported the commodities of the East. The em peror Justinian 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 Cosas. merchant, made several voyages, and afterwards composed his Topographia Christiana, containing a particular description of India. The great outburst of Mahometan conquest was followed by an Arabian civiliza on, having its centres at Cordova and Baghdad, in connexion with which geography again received a share of attention.

vellers.

From the 9th to the 13th century intelligent Mahometan Mabometravellers wrote accounts of what they had seen and heard tan in distant lands, which have been handed down to us; while the caliphs of Baghdad encouraged the study of geographical science.

The caliph Al-Mamûn, the worthy son and successor of Hârûn er-Rashid, caused an Arabic version of Ptolemy's great astronomical work (úvragis μeyiorn) to be made, which is known as the Almagest, the word being nothing more than the Greek peyiorn with the Arabic article al prefixed. The geography of Ptolemy is also constantly referred to by Arab writers. The learned men under Al-Mamûn began to apply themselves to astronomy in 813 A.D., following the system of Ptolemy; and the first observations that are properly their own were made by El-Báthany in Mesopotamia, of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, in 882 a.d. The Arab astronomers also measured a degree on the plains of Mesopotamia, and Ibn Yunus observed three eclipses at Cairo. The caliph's librarian, Abu Jafar Muhammad Ben Muse, wrote a geographical work, now unfortunately lost, entitled Rasm 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 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. Sulaiman's information was supplemented by that collected by another writer named Abu Zaid; and, so far as India is concerned, this work is the most important that we possess before the grand epoch of the discoveries of Marco Polo. Next to Sulaiman followed the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor, whose narrative, though inserted in the Arabian Nights, also forms a distinct and separate work, which was translated into French by M. Langlès in 1814. Baron Walckenaer ascribes to the voyages of Sindbad a date about coincident with those of Sulaiman. Ibn Khurdadra, a fire-worshipper converted to Islam, who died in 912 A.D., also wrote an account of India. Al Masudi, a great traveller who knew all the countries between Spain and China, described the plains, mountains, and seas, the dynasties and peoples, in his Murúju-l Zahab (“ Meadows of Gold "). He died in 956. His contemporaries were Al Istakhri, who travelled through all the Mahometan countries, and wrote his Book of Climates in 950, and Ibn Haukal, whose Book of Roads and Kingdoms was written in 976. Al Idrisi was born at Ceuta, and after travelling far and wide, settled in Sicily, where he was induced by Roger II., the Norman king, to write lisbook

Mongol tables.

North

men.j

Early knowledge of

Anierica.

on geography, the full title of which is The Delight of those who seek to wander through the Regions of the World. Finally Al Kazwini, who was a compiler from the works of Istakhri and Ibn Haukal in about 1263, brings us down to the times when the Italian explorers began to make known the vast realms of Asia to the people of Europe.

The Mongol and Turkish dynasties, which succeeded each other after the fall of the Arabian caliphs, also produced rulers who encouraged geographical science. Philosophers. assembled at the court of Hulaku Khan (1253-1264) at Maraghah in the north of Persia; and his friend Nâsiru-'dDin was the most famous astronomer of the age. He constructed the tables known as the Tables of the Ilkhany, which corrected some important errors in the former mode of adjusting the commencement of the new year. Nearly two centuries later, in 1446, Ulugh Begh, of the house of Timur, succeeded to the throne of Samarkand, and under his auspices the famous tables called "Zij Ulugh Begh" were composed. They continued to be authorities for long afterwards, and even Kinueir, in determining the latitudes of places in Persia, often quotes the tables of Ulugh Begh. The Northmen of Denmark and Norway, who were the terror of all the coasts of Europe, and who established themselves in England and Ireland, in France and Sicily, were also great promoters of geographical discovery during the darkest period of the Middle Ages. The Northmen were far from being always vikings, bent only on rapine and plunder. They were very often peaceful merchants. King Alfred sent Ulfsten and the Norwegian Ottar on voyages of discovery towards the White Sea; and the 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 Kharism and Novgorod to the Baltic, and immense quantities of Arabian coins have been found in Sweden, and particularly in the island of Gothland, which are preserved at Stockholm. Five-sixths of them were from the mints of the Samanian dynasty, which reigned in Khorasan and Transoxiana from about 900 to 1000 A.D. It was the trade with the East that originally gave importance to the city of Visby in Gothland.

In the end of the 9th century Iceland was colonized from Norway; and in 985 the intrepid viking Erik, surnamed the Red, discovered Greenland, and induced some of his Icelandic countrymen to settle on its inhospitable shores. In 986 young Bjorni, son of one of Erik's comrades, sailed from Iceland to join his father in Greenland, but shaped his course too far to the south, and was the discoverer of America. He sailed along the coasts of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Nova Scotia, before he eventually found the fjord on the Greenland coast where his father dwelt. Then Leif, the son of Erik, bought the ship from young Bjorni and made another voyage of discovery, and once more the coast of America was visited. Other expeditions were undertaken by his two brothers, intercourse was kept up between Greenland and Norway, and the saga of Thorfinn tells us of other voyages to America. The last that was heard of the Norwegian colonies in Greenland was in a brief of Pope Nicolas V. in 1448, where it is stated that, 30 years before, the settlements had been destroyed by the attacks of savages. Two noble Venetians, Nicolo and Antonio Zeno, who were in the service of the prince of the Faroe Islands in the end of the 13th century, recorded their observations respecting the Norse colonies. Antonio actually went to Greenland, and heard of the visits of fishermen to two parts of North America called Estotiland and Drogeo.

CHE At length the long period of barbarism which accompanied sados, and followed the fall of the Roman empire drew to a close in Europe. The crusades had a very favourable influence

on the intellectual state of the Western nations. Interesting regions, known only by the scant reports of pilgrims, were made the objects of attention and research; while religous 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. Amoug 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 13 years.

Christian missionary zeal was another motive for explora- Fra tion.. John of Plano Carpini in Perugia, a Franciscan C 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 February 1246; and, after some stay, went on to the camp of the great khan near Karakorum, and returned safely in the autumn of 1247. A few years afterwards, a Fleming named Rubruqnis was sent by St Louis on a mission to the Tatar chiefs, and wrote a very interesting narrative. He entered the Black Sea in May 1253, visited Batu and the court of the great khan Mangu near Karakorum, and got back to Antioch about the end of June 1255. Rubruquis had the merit of being the first modern traveller 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 Otrar, 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 Mart Venice, were engaged in distributing the jewels, the spices, Polo. and the fine cloths of India 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 to brave all the obstacles and dangers to be encountered in visiting those remote countries. Among these were Nicolo and Maffeo Polo, two brothers who traded with the East and visited Tatary. The recital of their travels fired the youthful imagination of young Marco Polo, the son of Nicolo, and he set out for the court of Kublai Khan, with his father and uncle, in 1265. After a journey of three years and a half they reached Yeu-king, near the spot where Peking now stands, and young Marco was enrolled among the attendants of honour of the Grand Khan. During the seventeen years that he remained in this service, Marco Polo was employed on important missions; and besides what he learnt from his own observation, he collected from others much information 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 its latest and ablest editor truly says, "All other travellers of that time are but stars of a low magnitude beside the full orb of Marco Polo."

Still these minor orbs continued to do useful geographical work, while striving to spread the truths of the Gospe 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 in about 1318, and was in western India and northern China between 1321 and 1328, dying in 1331. He went by Constantinople to Trebizond, thence through

Persia to Ormuz, where he embarked for Tana in Salsette. He then went to Malabar, Sematra, and Java, and by the ports of China to Cambaluc or Peking, where he remained for three years. Turning westward he journeyed by Shensi into Tibet, and was the first European to visit Lassa. His homeward journey led him by Cabul and Khorasan to Tabriz, and thence to Venice. His companion was an Irishnian named Friar James.1

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 was not born at Tangier until 1304. He began his wanderings in 1325, his career thus coinciding in time with that of Sir John Mandeville (1322-1356), but the Moor was more trustworthy than the Englishmau. Ibn Batuta went by land, from Tangier to Cairo, then visiting Syria, and performing 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, which remarkable place he correctly describes. Thence he visited the African coast, touching at Momboas and Quiloa, and then sailed across to Ormuz and the Persian Gulf. He crossed Arabia from Bahreyn to Jiddah, traversed the Red Sea and the desert to Syene, and descended the Nile to Cairo. After this he revisited Syria and Asia Minor, crossed the Black Sea to Caffa, and proceeded to the camp of the khan of Kipchak at the foot of the Caucasus. Ibn Batuta crossed the desert from Astrakhan to Bokhara, and went over the Hindu Kush to Cabul, reaching the Indus somewhere below Larkhana, in 1333. He gives an interesting account of Muhammad Tughluk, then ruler of Delhi, in whose service the great traveller remained for about eight years. He was sent on an embassy to China in 1342, travelling by land from Delhi to the seaport; whence the ambassadors sailed down the west coast of India to Calicut, and then visited the Maldive Islands and Ceylon. He made a voyage through the Islands to China, and on his return he proceeded from Malabar to Baghdad and Damascus, where he got his first news from home and heard of his father's death. Finally he reached Fez, the capital of his native country, in November 1349, after an absence of twenty-four years, and came to the conclusion that there was no place like home. After a journey into Spain, he set out for Central Africa in 1352, and reached Timbuctoo and the Niger, returning to Fez in 1353. He had travelled over a length of at least 75,000 English miles. His nurrative was committed to writing from his dictation, by order of the sultan of Fez, and the work was completed in December 1355. Ibn Batuta died at the age of seventythree, in the year 1377. His whole work was carefully edited in the original, with a translation into French under the auspices of the Asiatic Society of Paris, and published in 1858. Colonel Yule has given us an English version of the portion relating to China.

turned in 1406, and died soon after, but not before he had written a most valuable and interesting narrative of his travels from Constantinople through Persia and Khorasan to the Oxus, and thence by the Iron Gates to Samarkand. Several Italians continued to make important journeys in Italian the East during the 15th century. Among them was travellers. 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. Towards the end of the same century, the Venetians sent several embassies to Uzun Hassan, the ruler of Persia, and to Shah Ismail, his successor; and the narratives of the envoys furnish some new geographical information. The first of these was Caterino Zeno, who induced Uzun Hassan to make war on the Turks in 1472; and he was followed by Josafat Barbaro and Ambrogio Contarini. Another Venetian traveller of this period, whose narrative has been preserved, was Giovan Maria Angiolello. He was in the service of the Turks, and was present in their campaign against the Persians. One of the most remarkable of the Italian travellers was Ludovico di Varthema, whose insatiable desire to see foreign countries induced him to leave his native land in the year 1502. He went to Egypt and Syria, and for the sake of visiting the holy cities became a Mahometan. After many extraordinary adventures he got on board a ship at Åden. Varthema is the first European who gave an account of the interior of Yemen. He afterwards visited and described many places in Persia, India, and the Eastern Archipelago, returning to Europe in a Portuguese ship after an absence of five years.

In mentioning Varthema we have anticipated events; but Mariner's in the 15th century the time was approaching when the compass. discovery of the Cape of Good Hope was almost indefinitely to widen the scope of geographical enterprise. The great event was preceded by the discovery of the polarity of the magnetic needle, and the consequent construction of the mariner's compass. This most important discovery appears to have been made in China, and it is uncertain when the compass was first used by Western nations. Its introduction has been attributed to Flavio Gioia, a citizen of Amalfi, in the kingdom of Naples, about the year 1307. Encouraged by the possession of this sure guide, by which at all tines and in all places he could with certainty steer his course, the navigator gradually abandoned the method of sailing along the shore, and boldly committed his bark to the open sea. Navigation was then destined to make rapid progress. The growing spirit of enterprise, combined with the increasing light of science, prepared the states of Europe for entering upon that great career of discovery, of which the details constitute the materials for the history of modern' geography. Portugal took the lead in this new and brilliant path, and foremost in the front rank of thɔ worthies of this little hero-nation stands the figure of Prince Henry the Navigator.

the Navi

gator.

A Sir John Mandeville copied largely from Odoric, and the substance of his travels to the Indies and Cathay is entirely stolen from the Italian traveller, though amplified with fables from Pliny and other acients, as well as from his own imagination. See Colonel Yule in his account of Odoric (Cathay, and the Way Thither, i. p. 27).

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