rical configuration to the earth, had been proved to be a fact. The estuaries of rivers had been found far surpassing in magnitude the mightiest streams known before,-the Plata, Amazon, Orinoco, and St. Lawrence. New families of men had been encountered, with peculiar customs and languages. A multitude of fresh botanical and zoological forms had been observed. The phenomena of the trade winds, and the grand stable currents of the tropical ocean had been remarked; and regions of the vault of heaven, never seen before by the northern dwellers, had been disclosed, the Magellanic clouds and beautiful constellations revolving round the Antarctic Pole. 29. It is painful to reflect to what an enormous extent that benignant act of Providence, the revelation of the New World to the Old, was at the time abused by the latter. There are few chapters of human history more saddening to a rightly constituted mind than those which detail the conduct of the early transatlantic adventurers. Omitting the career of Columbus,- -a striking exceptional case,-the majority of those who followed in his track regarded whatever the eye desired in the discovered territories as lawful spoil, and trampled under foot every principle of morality in dealing with the legitimate owners. With parade and ceremony indeed, the Spaniards and Portuguese erected the figure of the cross upon every fresh shore attained; but the spirit and laws of the religion of the cross were so grievously outraged by their practices, that the native mind could only associate ideas of rapine and cruelty with the symbol. No right of property, on the part of the tribes, in the soil, or in the natural productions of their country, or even in their own bodies, was respected or acknowledged; but as opportunity served they were unceremoniously plundered, and treated. with indignity while offering remonstrance. But if history here teems with instances of lawless aggression, it records also the retributive justice of Providence. The way of the transgressors was hard. Violent dealing recoiled in punishment upon the heads of the offending; and ill-gotten gain proved a curse to its possessors. The eager grapple for wealth among the settlers led to jealousies and discontents, inducing strife, conspiracy, and murder, converting each settlement into a pandemonium; and while many a renowned leader met with a tragic fate at the hands of his countrymen, others perished largely in indiscriminate massacre from the incensed natives. Even Spain, the mothercountry which received most largely into her coffers the gold of the New World, was impoverished thereby, for it stimulated an expenditure in foreign wars beyond the vast resources at command; and the time of her greatest aggrandizement with territory in the western hemisphere, corresponds with the date when her downward progress commenced in Europe-a decline from the highest rank as to influence and prosperity, to become what she now is, one of the poorest and most powerless of the nations within the range of civilization. CHAPTER III. MODERN GEOGRAPHY. 30. During the remainder of the sixteenth century, some of the inland regions of America were explored, Mexico by the soldiers of Cortes, Peru and Chili by those of Pizarro, and Brazil by the Portuguese nobles, to whom in the first instance that country was allotted by the crown, while new portions of the coast-line were discovered, and the shores which had been visited were more thoroughly examined. A squadron despatched by the French monarch Francis I., under Verrazano, completed a survey of the whole coast of the present United States in 1524; and a second expedition under Cartier, in 1535, navigated the St. Lawrence to Hochelaga, on the site of the present Montreal. On the opposite side of the continent Ulloa, in 1539, surveyed the Gulf of California; and soon afterwards, the knowledge of the coast was extended to the present Columbia river. The passage was several times made from the ports of Western America across the Pacific to the Moluccas, in the course of which Papua or New Guinea, the Pelew Islands, and others belonging to the great group of the Carolinas, were made known with the Marquesas, so named after the Marquis of Mendoça, viceroy of Peru in 1595. The second vessel that circumnavigated the globe was sent by England, under sir Francis Drake, who sailed from Plymouth December 13, 1577, passed through the Straits of Magel lan, coasted Chili, Peru, and Mexico, crossed the Ocean to the Phillippines, and returned to Europe by the Cape, arriving at Plymouth, September 26, 1580, after an absence of rather more than two years and nine months. The third circumnavigation was also an English adventure, conducted by Cavendish, and accomplished between July 21, 1586, and September 9, 1588, which first made known in this country one of its present possessions, the island of St. Helena. The Dutch performed the fourth circumnavigation, under Van Noort, who sailed September 13, 1598, and returned to Amsterdam, August 26, 1601. 31. To the last half of the century belong a series of voyages of exciting and mournful interest, in those regions of the ocean which are exposed to the almost constant attacks of the tempest, and roll in the neighbourhood of the perpetual ice. It shows how little was known of the geography of northern Asia at this period, when it was conceived possible to open a shorter and safer route to India by passing round the North Cape of Europe; yet the merchants of London, with Edward vi., entertained this idea, and despatched an expedition, in 1553, to attempt the object. Three ships reached the northern coasts of Europe, where two of them perished in the dangerous Arctic Ocean, with the unfortunate admiral, sir Hugh Willoughby; the third vessel gaining with difficulty the shores of the White Sea: As with first prow He for the passage sought, attempted since Three years later, the enterprise was again attempted. Stephen Burroughs, who conducted it, made the island of Waigatz, where his further course was arrested by the ice; but he probably discovered the south-east coast of Nova Zembla, which was only about thirty miles distant across the strait of Kara. A third effort, in 1580, under Pet and Jackman, met with no better success, the same obstacle compelling the commanders to return, after escaping many perils, being enveloped with dark fogs, and obliged to make fast their vessels to the icebergs, where, "abiding the Lord's leisure, they continued with patience." The Dutch now took up the subject of a north-east passage, and sent Barentz, one of the best seamen of the age, three times to the northern ocean in quest of it. He successively failed in attempting to sail north-eastward; but on his last voyage, the high latitude of 80° was reached. Bear Island and the coast of Spitzbergen were discovered, and the north extremity of Nova Zembla was doubled. In this dreary region the crew were obliged to winter; the ice having suddenly gathered in force around their vessel, so completely imprisoned it as to forbid the hope of escape, and at length so damaged it that they were forced to construct a tent for shelter on the adjoining shore. The account of their sufferings from the cold; their contrivances for self-preservation; their mode of passing the dismal three months' night; their expedients to measure time, the cold having stopped all the time-pieces; their joy on witnessing the deep darkness abated by the first faint flush of sunlight tinging the horizon; and their struggles with the polar bear, a repeated assailant of their cabin, constitute a narrative of intense interest. Barentz and his companions were, no doubt, the first human beings to survive a winter in such a latitude, and were indebted for their preservation through it, under the merciful care of Providence, mainly to their active habits, correct discipline, and moral qualities. 32. At the time that England was pursuing the chimera of a north-east passage to India, her mariners were also employed in endeavouring to find a route to that quarter by the north-west passage of America. This object led to the voyages of Frobisher, followed by those of Davis, in the Greenland seas, whose names are now attached to the straits they respectively discovered. Soon after the seventeenth century commenced, in 1610, Hudson, who was engaged in the same service, entered the great inland sea, now called from him Hudson's Bay. This was sanguinely conceived to be a part of the Pacific Ocean, and navigated under this idea by Burton in 1612, who was expecting soon to reach the shores of Japan, when its western boundary stopped his further progress. In 1616, Bylot and Baffin pushed beyond Davis' Strait, and penetrated to the head of that extensive bay which bears the name of the latter, the most skilful pilot of his time, advancing beyond the parallel of 74°, and defining that great arm of the ocean as it is now represented on our maps. In a different quarter of the globe, the Spanish navigators made extensive researches. Quiros, sailing from Callao, in 1605, brought to light, among other islands, that of Sagitaria, believed to be the Otaheite of a subsequent period, and fully corrected the opinion respecting the Pacific being a vast watery waste, which the voyage of Magellan engendered. In fact, the lands observed in its immense expanse led him strongly to maintain the existence of a continent in the southern seas, rivalling in magnitude either of those in the northern, an idea which was generally held for a century and a half afterwards. Torres, one of his officers, having been separated from the rest of the fleet by a storm, was the first to pass through the channel between Australia and New Guinea, now known as Torres' Strait, and saw land on the south, which must have been part of the great island, probably Cape York, its most northern projection. The Dutch, however, made the most important contributions to geography in the seventeenth century, not only by the vessels which carried on their commerce with Batavia, but by regular nautical enterprises; and to them belongs the honour of the discovery of Australia, which was reached by one of their exploring ships a few months before it was seen by Torres. Subsequently, in October, 1616, the western coast between the southern tropic and latitude 28°, was visited by Dirck Hatichs, and called Endracht's Land, the " Country of Comfort," from the name of his ship, which that region still retains. About the same time, during a regular voyage of discovery which sailed from the Texel in June, 1615, Schouten and Le Maire found a safer and quicker route into the Pacific than through the Straits of Magellan, by rounding Tierra del Fuego, the southern extremity of America, denominating its terminus, Cape Horn or Hoorn, after the native town of one of the navigators. But Tasman, in 1642, surpassed all his countrymen in the extent of his discoveries, which included New Zealand, large tracts of the Australian coast, Van Diemen's Land, and some solitary islands, with others belonging to the Friendly and Fejee groups. Van Diemen's Land, now frequently called Tasmania, received its original designation in honour of |