Behring, a Dane by birth, but in
the Russian service, died here in 1741, upon the scene of his
discovery.
He and his crew, victims of scurvy, were unable to
manage their vessel in a storm; and it was at length wrecked on a
barren island, there, where "want, nakedness, cold, sickness,
impatience, and despair, were their daily guests," Behring, his
lieutenant, and the master died.
Now we must put a girdle round the world, and do it with the speed
of Ariel. Here we are already in the heats of the equator. We can
do no more than remark, that if air and water are heated at the
equator, and frozen at the poles, there will be equilibrium
destroyed, and constant currents caused. And so it happens, so we
get the prevailing winds, and all the currents of the ocean. Of
these, some of the uses, but by no means all, are obvious. We urge
our "Phantom" fleetly to the southern pole. Here, over the other
hemisphere of the earth, there shines another hemisphere of heaven.
The stars are changed; the southern cross, the Magellanic clouds,
the "coal-sack" in the milky way, attract our notice. Now we are in
the southern latitude that corresponds to England in the north; nay,
at a greater distance from the Pole, we find Kerguelen's Land,
emphatically called "The Isle of Desolation." Icebergs float much
further into the warm sea on this side of the equator before they
dissolve. The South Pole is evidently a more thorough refrigerator
than the North. Why is this? We shall soon see. We push through
pack-ice, and through floes and fields, by lofty bergs, by an island
or two covered with penguins, until there lies before us a long
range of mountains, nine or ten thousand feet in height, and all
clad in eternal snow. That is a portion of the Southern Continent.
Lieutenant Wilkes, in the American exploring expedition, first
discovered this, and mapped out some part of the coast, putting a
few clouds in likewise - a mistake easily made by those who omit to
verify every foot of land. Sir James Ross, in his most successful
South Pole Expedition, during the years 1839-43, sailed over some of
this land, and confirmed the rest. The Antarctic, as well as the
Arctic honours he secured for England, by turning a corner of the
land, and sailing far southward, along an impenetrable icy barrier,
to the latitude of seventy-eight degrees, nine minutes. It is an
elevated continent, with many lofty ranges. On the extreme southern
point reached by the ships, a magnificent volcano was seen spouting
fire and smoke out of the everlasting snow. This volcano, twelve
thousand four hundred feet high, was named Mount Erebus; for the
Erebus and Terror long sought anxiously among the bays, and sounds,
and creeks of the North Pole, then coasted by the solid ice walls of
the south.
H. M.
A DISCOURSE WRITTEN BY SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, KNIGHT.
To prove a Passage by the North-West to Cathay and the East Indies.
CHAPTER I. - TO PROVE BY AUTHORITY A PASSAGE TO BE ON THE NORTH SIDE
OF AMERICA, TO GO TO CATHAY AND THE EAST INDIES.
When I gave myself to the study of geography, after I had perused
and diligently scanned the descriptions of Europe, Asia, and Africa,
and conferred them with the maps and globes both antique and modern,
I came in fine to the fourth part of the world, commonly called
America, which by all descriptions I found to be an island environed
round about with the sea, having on the south side of it the Strait
of Magellan, on the west side the Mare de Sur, which sea runneth
towards the north, separating it from the east parts of Asia, where
the dominions of the Cathaians are. On the east part our west
ocean, and on the north side the sea that severeth it from
Greenland, through which northern seas the passage lieth, which I
take now in hand to discover.
Plato in his Timaeus and in the dialogue called Critias, discourses
of an incomparable great island then called Atlantis, being greater
than all Africa and Asia, which lay westward from the Straits of
Gibraltar, navigable round about: affirming, also, that the princes
of Atlantis did as well enjoy the governance of all Africa and the
most part of Europe as of Atlantis itself.
Also to prove Plato's opinion of this island, and the inhabiting of
it in ancient time by them of Europe, to be of the more credit:
Marinaeus Siculus, in his Chronicle of Spain, reporteth that there
hath been found by the Spaniards in the gold mines of America
certain pieces of money, engraved with the image of Augustus Caesar;
which pieces were sent to the Pope for a testimony of the matter by
John Rufus, Archbishop of Constantinum.
Moreover, this was not only thought of Plato, but by Marsilius
Ficinus, an excellent Florentine philosopher, Crantor the Grecian,
Proclus, also Philo the famous Jew (as appeareth in his book De
Mundo, and in the Commentaries upon Plato), to be overflown, and
swallowed up with water, by reason of a mighty earthquake and
streaming down of the heavenly flood gates. The like thereof
happened unto some part of Italy, when by the forcibleness of the
sea, called Superum, it cut off Sicily from the continent of
Calabria, as appeareth in Justin in the beginning of his fourth
book. Also there chanced the like in Zeeland, a part of Flanders.
And also the cities of Pyrrha and Antissa, about Palus Meotis; and
also the city Burys, in the Corinthian Gulf, commonly called Sinus
Corinthiacus, have been swallowed up with the sea, and are not at
this day to be discerned: by which accident America grew to be
unknown, of long time, unto us of the later ages, and was lately
discovered again by Americus Vespucius, in the year of our Lord
1497, which some say to have been first discovered by Christopher
Columbus, a Genoese, Anno 1492.
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