<^ILIBRARYQ^ vvlOSANCElfXx '^.f/0JllV3JO^ "^^I/OJIIVJ-JO^ ;WSANCElfj> o ^OAHvaaiH'^ '^^>«.avaai># ^riiaoNvsoi^"^ %a3AiNn-3WV' \WE-UNIVERSyA ^vWSANCElfj> %a3A!Nfl-3WV^ ^:^t•UBRARY^/;^ ^^^l•LIBRARYa^ '^tfojnv3jo>' AWEUNIVERS'/a ^^lOS•ANCElfJ> '%a3AINft-3WV^ ^OFCAltFO% "^CAavaaiH^ aofcaiifo% ce ^^AHvaaii-^^ ^^l•lIBRARYQ^ 1 1 If: ^^^l■L!BRARY,7y 'vMM'M!VER.?/A ^" fir — * :WSANCElfj> ■^/ia3AINn-3WV AWEUN1VER% ^lOSANGElfx> AN^tllBRARY^/; .^ ^,^^t•LiBRARYQ<^ 3 2 %a3AINn-3WV^ ^.!/0Jl]V0JO^ ^(tfOdlTVD'JO^ n ^>;^t•llBRARYQ< ^OFCAllFOr ^ME■UNIVEP^ 'JJliJHY-^iUl'^' '^/^ajAiniiin^ Sf ^lOSANCElfi:^ i^^"^ -^a] J O I? Cfc- "^aHAINO^WV •^ v^l-LIBRARY/?/^ ^^tllBRARYQ^^ '% ' ^ 10^ /?^^ ^UiBPadvy), it ^. By the same Author, AFRICA {Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel). Based on Hellwald's " Die Erde iind Ihre Volker." With Ethnological Appendix by A. H. Keane, M.A.I. Large post 8vo, cloth gilt, with 16 Maps and Diagrams, and 68 Illustrations, 21s. THE LONDON GEOGBAPHIOAL SERIES. A PHYSICAL, HISTOKICAL, POLITICAL, & DESCKIPTIVE GEOGKAPHY By KEITH JOHNSTON, r.RG.S. EDITOR OF THE ' AFRICA ' VOLUME IN ' STANFORD'S COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL ; LATE LEADER OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY'S EAST AFRICAN EXPEDITION. MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS SE C OND EDITION— RE VISED LONDON EDAVARD STANFORD, 55 CHARING CROSS, S.W. 1881 122- PEEFACE TO THE FIEST EDITION. The unfortunate death of the Author, on the eve of the publication of this work, makes it necessary for me to say a few words to the Public. Mr. Keith Johnston left England, in order to lead the Eoyal Geographical Society's expedition for the exploration of the country north of Lake Nyassa, as the book was passing through the press. The last portions of the MS. were sent from Zanzibar, and proofs left by the return mail, that they might receive attention from him during his halt there, or on his onward journey ; but before they had arrived Mr. Keith Johnston had fallen a victim to exposure and tlie clhnate, and a career already marked by good work done for Geography, and giving great promise of future achievement, was suddenly brought to an end. Under these circumstances, as it was necessary to take steps to ensure for the book the same advantages which it would have derived from a last revision by its Author, Mr. Drew, of Eton College, and the Author's old friend and colleague, Mr, Bolton, have kindly given their aid, and seen it through the press. I have therefore much confidence that this last result of the Author's labour and skill is sent forth in a fitting state and form. EDWAED STANFOED. 55 Charing Cross, January 1880. PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The cordial and appreciative reception accorded to the late Mr. Keith Johnston's " Geography," satisfactorily proves that the general plan of the work meets the re- quirements of a considerable portion of the public. In preparing this Second Edition nothing has therefore been changed in the arrangement of the materials embodied in this volume. Mr. Eavenstein, whom I entrusted with the task of revising the work, has confined himseK to such amendments as appeared to be called for by the pro- gress of geographical exploration and statistical inquiry ; he has corrected a few errors, unavoidable in a work dealing with such a multitude of facts, and has given some additional information on the empire of Austria- Hungary and Polynesia. I shall at all times be happy to receive suggestions for still further improving a work which appears to be destined to take a permanent place amongst English Geographical literature. EDWAED STANEOED. 55 CiiARiKG Cross, January 1881. CONTENTS. I. Introductory Chapter ...... Explanation of "direction" and "distance" — The compass — The cardinal points — Boxing the compass — The mariner's compass — The sun's apparent path across the sky — The pole star — The "pace" — Natural scale — Mapping — Plan drawing — Surveying — Construction of sections — Exercises in map drawing. PAGE 1 II. Sketch op Historical Geography 1. From 1000 to 450 B.C. 2. , 450 to 325 B.C. 3. , 325 B.C. to 300 A.D 4. , 300 to 500 A.D. 5. , 500 to 800 A.D. 6. , 800 to 1000 A.D. 7. , , 1000 to 1300 A.D. 8. , , 1300 to 1500 A.D. 9. , , 1500 to 1600 A.D. 10. , , 1600 to 1700 A.D. 11. , , 1700 to 1800 A.D. 12. , , 1800 to 1880 A.D. III. Physical Geography 1. Form and Dimensions of the Earth Proof of the sphericity of the earth — The visible horizon — Measurement of an arc by Eratosthenes of Alexandria — Calculation of the earth's diameter — Modern triangulation operations — Parallels of latitude — Meridians of longitude — Projections of the sphere — Orthographic, Stereographic, Globular — Mercator's chart. 2. Proper Movements of the Earth .... Rotation on an imaginary axis — Revolution round the sun — Evidence of daily rotation — Evidence of annual revolu- tion — The ecliptic — Temperature — Tlie zones. 19 20 22 23 26 28 30 33 39 45 57 65 74 101 101 112 VIU CONTENTS. PAGE 3. Distribution of Land and Sea . . . .122 Area of land and water — Form of the land masses — Elevation of the land — Depth of the sea — Distribution of mountains and plains. 4. Causes which Determine Climate . . . .130 Decrease of temperature with elevation — Temperature of sea and land compared — Temperature of atmosphere — Ex- planation of land and sea breezes — Periodical winds — Monsoons — Trade winds — Oceanic circulation, caused by difference of temperature, and by density. Ocean cur- rents — The Gulf stream, the Japan current, Mozambique current, Peruvian current. South Atlantic current, Aus- tralian current, Antarctic drift. East Greenland current. Evaporation — Periodical rains, distribution of moisture by the winds, influence of mountain ranges, deserts. Dis- tribution of vegetable and animal life — Effects of climate on the distribution of man. 5. Peoples of the World — Natural religions and Political Systems 146 Total population of the world. Races — Aryan family, Mongolian, Hamite, Semite, Negro, Bantu, Hottentot, Eskimo, Papuan or Negrito. Religions — Polytheism, Monotheism — Numbers of the followers of the chief religions. Growth of political organisation. Tribal divisions — Patriarchate, empire, kingdom, monarchy, despotism, oligarchy, democracy, republic, state, colony. Boundaries — Natural frontiers, artiticial frontiers. EUROPE. General description, Extent, Relief, Hydrography, Climate, Products, Races, Education, Religion, Government . . . . I. THE TEUTONIC STATES. 1. The British Isles 2. Scandinavia 3. Denmark . Faroe Islands and Iceland 4. German Empire North Germany — Prussia . Saxony . Smaller States and Hanse Towns 155 167 182 188 191 193 196 197 198 CONTENTS. IX South Germany — Bavaria . Wiirtemburg Baden . PAGK 199 200 200 5. Austria and Hungary 201 Cis-Leithan Austria The Kingdom of Hungary 205 208 6. Switzerland 208 7. Netherlands Luxembourg 212 215 8. Belgium 215 II. ROMANIC STATES. 1. France . 218 Pyeen^an or Iberian Peninsula . 224 2. Spain ..... . 228 3. Portugal .... . 231 4. Italy ..... . 232 5. Greece ..... . 239 6. Romania ..... . 243 III. SLAVONIC STATES. Balkan Peninsula .... : 245 1. Servia ..... . 250 2. Montenegro .... . 250 3. Bosnia and Herzegovina . 251 4. Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia . 252 5. Turkey Proper . 253 6. European Russia .... . 255 ASIA. General Description, Lowlands, Highland.s, Hydrography, Climate, People, Religion ........ 261 Russian Asia — The Caucasus 277 CONTENTS. Siberia .... 279 KussiAN Central Asia ..... 282 Chinese Asia- Chinese Empire ...... 283 China Proper . 284 Manchuria .... . 292 COEEA .... . 293 Mongolia .... . 295 ZUNGARIA . 297 Eastern Turkistan . . 298 Tibet ..... . 299 Japan — Japan Proper ...... 302 Yezo ...... . 305 KuRiLE Islands .... . 306 Liu-Kiu Islands .... . 306 Japanese Colony in Corea — Bonin Islands . 307 Indian Asia — India ........ 307 Ceylon . . . . . . .320 Laccadive Islands, Maldive Islands . . . 322 Farther India — British Burmah ...... 323 BURJIAH 324 SlAM .... 325 Annam 327 Lower Cochin China 328 Cambodia 329 Malacca 329 British Straits Settlements 330 East India Islands . 330 Sumatra 332 Java .... 333 CONTENTS. XI PAGE Borneo .... . 333 Celebes .... . 335 Lesser Sunda Islands . 335 Moluccas .... . 336 Philippine Islands . . 336 Sulu Islands 337 Mohammedan Asia — Baluchistan .... . ■ . 337 Afghanistan .... . 338 Afghan Turkistan . . 341 Independent Turkistan . 342 Persia .... . 344 Asiatic Turkey . 347 Arabia .... . 355 AFRICA. Contour, Relief, Rivers, Climate, Products, People, Religion, Govern- ment ........ 360 The Barbary States ...... 368 Marocco . . . . . . . 370 Algeria ....... 371 Tunis ....... 372 Tripoli ........ 373 Sahara (The Desert) . . . . . .374 Egyptian Dominion ...... 377 Abyssinia . . . ^ • • . . • 382 Soudan ........ 384 Senegambia ........ 385 Liberia ........ 386 Gold Coast ........ 386 Inland Countries of the Soudan (Futa Jallon, BanibarrM, Massina, Gando, Sokoto, Bornu, Baghirmi, Wadai) . . . 388 Lower Guinea ....-■• 389 Portuguese West Africa ..... 390 Xll CONTENTS. Somali and Gallas ..... Sultanate of Zanzibar ..... Portuguese East Africa ..... South Africa — Cape Colony ...... Kafraria ...... Natal ...... Orange Free State ..... Transvaal ...... Griqualand West, or the Diamond Fields Tlie Kafir KmcDOMS (Zululand, Gasa Country, Matebele, Barotse) ....... Kalahaba Desert ..... Namaqua and Damara Land . . . The Islands round Africa .... Madagascar, Comoro, Mascarenhas, Socotra, Madeira, Canary, Cape Verd, St. Helena, Ascension. PAGE 391 392 394 396 399 400 400 401 403 403 404 404 405 AMERICA. General description. Relief, Pavers and Lakes, Climate and Landscape, Plants and Animals, People, Religion and Education, Government Greenland British North America Canada Proper . New Brunswick . Nova Scotia Prince Edward Island North-West Territory Manitoba British Columbia Newfoundland . Alaska United States Mexico 408 414 416 417 418 419 419 420 421 421 422 423 424 431 CONTENTS. Xlll Central American States (Guatemala, Honduras Nicaragua, Costa Rica, British Honduras) San S alvador 43S West Indies .... 435 Colombia 437 Ecuador 438 Venezuela . 439 Guayana (British, Dutch, French) 441 Brazil 442 Peru 444 Bolivia 445 Chile 447 Argentine Republic 448 Paraguay . 450 Uruguay 451 Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego 451 Falkland Islands . 452 AUSTRALASIA. Australia — General Description, Relief, Rivers and Salt Lakes, Climate and Landscape, Animals, Products, People 453 New South Wales 455 Victoria .... 457 Queensland .... 457 South Australia 458 West Australia 459 Tasmanla ..... 460 New Zealand . . • . 461 Polynesia ..... 463 LIST OF MAPS. HISTORICAL MAPS. Chart of the prevailing Winds Chart of the Ocean Currents PHYSICAL MAPS. — 1. From 1000 to 450 B.C. . To face page 20 2. , 450 to 325 B.C. 22 3. , , 325 B.C. to 300 A.D. „ 24 4. , 300 to 500 A.D. 26 5. , , 500 to 800 A.D. 28 6. , , 800 to 1000 A.D 30 7. , , 1000 to 1300 A.E 33 8. , , 1300 to 1500 A.E 39 9. , , 1500 to 1600 A.D 45 10. , , 1600 to 1700 A.E . . „ 57 11. , , 1700 to 1800 A. D 65 12. , , 1800 to 1880 A.D 74 ;ie Seaso ns 119 Winds rrents 134 137 Europe AND Asia 155 Africa 360 North America 408 South j \.MERICA 408 AUSTRA LASIA 453 GEOGRAPHY: HISTORICAL, PHYSICAL, AND DESCRIPTIVE. I. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. DIRECTION AND DISTANCE. 1. The first and most important question that Geography^ has to answer is where ? In order to answer this — to describe where any place or object is — it is necessary to understand what is meant by direction and distance. If we go out into the open fields, the sky above appears like a vast dome that reaches down to the earth on all sides, forming a great circle in the centre of which we are standing. This circle, where earth and sky seem to meet, being the limit or boundary of what we can see, is called the horizon.^ Every morning the sun seems to rise near the same part of the horizon circle, and to climb slowly up into the arch of the sky during the day, descending again gradually till it disappears in the evening at a point opposite to that at which it was first seen. If we watch this apparent movement of the sun across the sky from day to day, we shall soon notice that the sun appears in the same direction from us, or over the same house, or hill, or church, or wood, every day at noon, or when it is highest. The best way to convince ourselves of this will be to mark out on the ground, or on the floor of the room, the line of shadow thrown by any upright object — a post or a straight tree trunk, the corner of the house wall 1 From Greek gk the earth, and grnpho to wrfte or describe. 2 From Greek orizo to bouud or limit. THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. or the side of the window — when the sun is highest, or when the shadow is shortest, and to watch the return of the shadow to this line at each midday. 2. That end of this midday or meridian^ line that we have drawn, which points towards the sun at noon,^ marks the direction called south; and the opposite end, towards which the shadow points at noon, shows the direction named the north.^ That side of the house, or other object, which faces the sun and is lighted up by it at noon, is thus called the south side ; the opposite one, which is in shade at twelve o'clock in the day, is the 7iorth side. Notice some prominent object, a tree, or spire, or hill, that lies north or south from where you are. 3. The point on the horizon circle near which the sun rises in the morning, midway between north and south on that side, is named the east; the opposite direction, that near which the sun sets in the evening, is called the west; the side of the house which faces the morning sun is thus the east side; that which looks towards the sun setting the west side. We may mark out these di- rections by drawing a line at right angles across our north and south line. 4. The four direc- tions thus laid down — north, south, east, and west — are named the cardinal points of the compass, and give the foundation of all geographical descriptions, points, secondary Fig. 1. Midway between these cardinal direction points are drawn, and are named from those between which they lie — north-east, between north and east ; soutli-east, between south and east ; soiith-west, be- tween south and west ; and north-west, between north and Fig. 2. 1 From Lat. meridics, midday. 2 in the northern hemisphere. 3 To mark the meridian line with greater accuracy, set up a straiglit stick on a level piece of ground. Three or four hours before noon measure tlie length of its shadow on the ground with a piece of string, and from the bottom of the post as a centre describe a circle with this distance as radius. Observe where the end of the shadow touches tliis circle again in the affbrnoon ; then the line joining the middle point between these two on the circle, and the bottom of the post, gives the line of the meridian. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 3 west, as in this diagram ; and these should be marked between the cardinal points you have drawn on the ground. 5. The spaces between these secondary points are further divided and subdivided. The direction midway between north and north- east takes the names of these two directions, and becomes north- north-east; between north and north-north-east comes the point called north by east, and between north-north-east and north-east that named north-east by north, and so on. There are thvis eight recognised points in each quarter of the circle, or thirty-two points in all. One of the first duties that a young sailor has to learn is that of " boxing the compass," or telling off these thii'ty-two points in order thus: — North. South. North hy east. South by west. North-north-east. South-south-west. North-east by north. South-west by south. North-cast. South-west. North-east by east. South-west by west. East-north-east. West-south-west. East by north. West by south. East. West. East by south. West by north. East-south-east. West-north-west. South-east by east. North-west by west. South-cast. North-west. South-east by south. North-west by north. South-south-east. North-north-west. South by east. North by west. North. And backward from north round by west to south and east. 6. As the whole circle is divided into 3G0 degrees^ each quadrant of the circle, or the arc between the cardinal points, between north and east for instance, comjDrises 90 degrees of the circle, and 90 degrees thus represents a right angle. Each degree is also subdivided into 60 minutes; and as there are eight minor spaces in each quadrant, the angle between two points is ec^ual to 11;| degrees or eleven degrees fifteen minutes ; marked thus, 11° 15'. 7. The compass that we have been drawing upon the ground from observation of the sun's position at noon must not be confused with the instrument called the mariner's comjjass, which is a divided card borne ujion a magnetised needle that points towards the magnetic pole of the earth. This magnetic pole does not correspond to the true north of the earth, and is ever gradually changing its jiosition, so that the mariner's compass is subject to an error calh^l 1 In the division most commonly euiployed, called the sexagesimal scale. 4 THE LONDON GEOGKAPHY. the variation. To find out the amount of this variation in the instrument, it would be necessary to mark out a true compass from observation of the sun, as we have been doing. The mariner's com- pass is thus an untrue guide unless its error is exactly known and allowed for, but we shall have no occasion to use it, or, indeed, any instrument or appliance other than we can readily make for our- selves. 8. If you have been watching the return of the shadow of the post or corner-wall from which you first got the direction of south to the same position every day at noon, you will have begun to notice that the length of the shadow has been gradually changing from day to day or from week to week. If you began to observe it in winter or spring, it will have become perceptibly shorter as summer came on ; or if in summer, longer and longer through autumn towards winter. In other words, the sun's path across the sky will seem to have risen to form a higher arch towards summer, and to have sunk gradually to a lower and flatter one as winter approached. You Avill have observed also, in watching the sunrise and sun- set, that the places where the sun first appears in the morning and sinks beneath the horizon-circle in the evening, do not correspond^ exactly to the direction of the east and west j^oints of the compass that we have drawn on the ground, but that they are somewhat to the south of these, and that from week to week the position of the points of sunrise and sunset creep gradiially along the horizon, nearer to the true east and west points in summer, when the arch of the sun's path is highest and longest, and farther from them in winter, when its path is lowest and shortest. As the changes of the seasons of the year, the causes of which we shall afterwards have to understand, depend upon these changes in the height of the apparent path of the sun, it is very im- portant to become acquainted with them for ourselves by actual observation. 9. Perhaps the most convincing way to do this will be to make an outline sketch of that part of the horizon- circle which lies towards the sunrising or sunsetting, or both, from where you are living, and to mark upon this, each time that a clear sunrise or simset is noticed, the position where the sun appears or disappears. The accompanying sketch, upon which the positions of the sun at setting, from winter on towards summer, have been marked at various dates, will show what is meant. 10. If we go out and observe the heavens from night to night, we shall soon notice that though the different groups of stars (or 1 Here in the British Isles. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. constellations as they are called) exhibit always the same form and appearance, they change position from hour to hour, moving across the sky just as the sun does, but with this difference, that some of them are visi- ble at all hours of every clear night, or do not set beneath the horizon, while others rise and set like the sun. If, for example, we watch the well-known group of stars commonly called from its shape the " Plough " or " Charles's wain" or " wag- gon," which the Romans called " Septem Triones," the seven ploughing oxen, we may see it in such a position as that marked (a) in the diagram on the fol- lowing page ; and if we look again some hours later it will have moved round to some position such as (b) or (c), or an intermediate one.i This constellation never sets beneath the horizon here in Britain, but, in the south of England, you will notice it just touching on the north- ern horizon, when it is at the lowest part of the circle through which it seems to pass in the sky. Others, such as the three bright stars of " Orion's belt," or the cluster of the " Pleiades," if you watch them, rise in the east and set on the western horizon like the sun, 1 The celestial ' ' waggon " thus goes backwaril. .>F ,^^' THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. ■ ^ '"' *- # 'c) ^' ^ ■* ^^ ^-" * ^ "^ / / y / \ \ / \ \ / } \ ,''*''' f ,,'-' * '■■, '' * ,,,'-''' ^ Ccn ^ ■* POLE STAR Cb) ^, * * ,'■' ; ', ,,'"' \ * \ * ,-''' \ ♦ / (a) :^ .d4t^ . -'^is^^^ssAg.oa^^SC^^jtS^ii'-^ _- ?"^-' %'l' :~erL Fig. 4. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 7 but the height of the arch they form in passing acrof?s the sky, unlike that of the sun, remains always the same. 1 1 . Nearly at the centre of the cii'cle which the Plough and the other stars seem to form in their course in the northern sky, is a star which remains always close to the same position, or immediately beside the centre or pole round which all the other stars seem to revolve. This is hence called the Pole Star, or the " North Star." Two of the brightest of the stars of the " Plough " or the " Wain " — the two which form the back of the imagined waggon or the face of the plough — are very nearly in line with this central star, and are called the iwinters, because they point to it. If an imaginary line be dra'wn through these two stars, and produced onward till the extended part is nearly live times the length of the apparent distance between the pointers, as in tlie diagram, its extremity \n\\ fall close to the Pole star. There is no other star equally bright in its vicinity, so that it cannot readily be mistaken. 12. Being thus able to find the position of the Pole star, we are in possession of another means of determining the cardinal points of the compass at any place.^ If overnight, out in the field or the garden, we set up two sticks so that a line joining them points in the direction of the Pole star, we shall find that they also point by day, in the opposite direction, to the sun at noon, or that they stand in the meridian line, north and south. 13. If, besides the direction of one point from another, we know the distance between the two, it becomes possible to define their relative position, and to represent this accurately on paper on a reduced scale. The most convenient measure of distance that we have is that of the pace ^ in walking, the distance between the heel of one foot and that of the other. In the army and among disciplined men the pace becomes of constant length, and is 2j feet (30 inches) for ordinary marching, or about 2100 paces go to an English statute mile of 1760 yards. (Find out for yourself what is the average length of your pace in ordinary walking.) 14. Suppose now, for example, that there is a flagstaff" in front of the doorway, and that the shadow of the post points directly to the door at noon, and that we find the distance from door to flag- staff^ to be 20 paces, we can say then that the staff is 20 paces south of the doorway, and the relative positions of the two objects are at once defined. In representing these relative positions on paper it is usual to assume that the top side of the paper is the northern, the "bottom the southern, as the compass has been drawn (p. 2), the 1 In the nortliern hemisphere. 2 Lat. passus. The Roman pace, however, was the interval between one heel-marl( and the next mark of tlie jiamfi heel, and was equivalent to 4'8 Enjjlish feet. 8 THE LONDON GEOGEAPHY. right being the eastern and the left the western side. Then, taking any convenient distance to represent 20 paces, say 20 MDoonoai/ tenths of an inch, the places of the staff and the doorway I would be laid down as in Fig. 5. Or suppose that, from the place where we have drawn the compass on the groimd, a tree, the corner of a wall, or any noticeable object, lies in the direction mid- ^ way between the north and east points, and that ,,''' it requires 15 paces to /' reach it, we woidd say that it stood 15 paces north-east, and its relative position would be repre- sented on paper, to the same scale we used before, as in Fig. 6. 15. The reduced scale referred to above is a smaller distance chosen at will to represent the true or natural distance in plotting or laying down a representation of the relative position of two objects on paper. The true scale in the first of the above examples is one of paces, but to represent even a small num- ber of these truly on paper would require an enormous sheet, and accordingly we have chosen a reduced scale, making one-tenth of an inch represent a pace. This reduced scale is said to be one three-hundredth (shi) of the natural scale ; or any distance repre- sented by it on paper must be multiplied by 300 to give the true length it represents, for we have found the pace to be 30 inches long, and have taken tV of an inch to represent a pace. iyStaff s Fig. 5. Pig. 6. Mapping. 16. We can now find roughly the direction and distance of any object, hence we are in a position to begin to make a ground-plan or map, which is just a representation in miniature of a part of the earth's surface.^ We can find, for instance, from the points of the compass that we have drawn, or by making another, what are the directions of the walls of the room or of the fences of the garden or field, and by pacing along these we can get a sufficiently accurate measurement of their length. 1 The African explorer Schweinfiirth, after his instruments had been lost in the burning of his hut, made a survey of a large district of the Upper Nile by counting his paces and observing by the sun the direction of his marches. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. Suppose, for example, that in the schoolroom the line of shadow thrown by the upright sash of the window at noon falls across the floor in the direction from the left corner of the window side of the room to the opposite corner, and we find on pacing it that the room is 1 paces square. We can tell then that its walls lie parallel to or in the same direction as the secondary points of the compass ; that one with the window in it and the back wall run from north-west to south-east, and the two side walls from north-east to south-west. The plmi of the room, drawn to the scale that we have used before, would then be as we have shown here, the dotted line representing the direction of the line of shadow at noon, and the stronger lines the walls. 17. Or we may go out into the garden or the field, and make a plan of its outline in the same way. Suppose that, after marking out the compass in the middle of the field by means of the shadow at noon, or by the Pole star at night, we find that the fence which contains the en- ^ trance gate mea- sures 50 paces, and that it lies in the direction north - east to south-west, we may draw it on paper, using a scale of an inch to represent 100 paces,i as shown by the line (a) Fig. 8. Next, pacing along the north wall, we find it to be 180 paces long, and that it lies as nearly as possible its plan is then shown by the line (h). The third L east and west Fig. 8. 1 A larger scale should be used in practice. This reduced scale would be represented by the fraction g^gW; ^'^^ ^^ *'^'s '^^^^ t^"* Imndredth part of an inch represents a pace of 30 inches long. 10 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. or south-east hedge proves, let us suppose, to have the same direction as the fence which has the gate in it, and is 170 paces long ; its plan will be the line (c) ; the fourth side lies south-east to north-west, and measures 130 paces, and is thus shown by the line (d) on the sketch. 18. Here then we have made a plan or map of the field, and have drawn it in its true geographical directions. The whole num- ber of paces round its sides is 530, or about a quarter of a mile, on the supposition that each pace represents about 2^ feet. If now you note carefully what time it takes you to walk round its boundaries, you will gain another means of estimating any longer distance ; that is, by observing the time required to walk a quarter of a mile, or better, a whole mile, or four times round the field. 19. Knowing how to find for yourself the cardinal points of the compass on any clear day or night, and being in possession of two measures of distance (your pace, and the time it takes you to walk a mile), you are now in a position to begin to learn the geography of your oviTi neighbourhood. What directions do the roads take from your house, and what villages or towns do you come to in following them ? What streams or rivers are there near you, in what directions do they flow, and where do they go to ? What lakes or canals ? What kind of country is it ? Are there any hills or mountains ? Is it wooded, or grassy, or under corn ? Are there any historical monuments in your neighbourhood, and what events do they recall ? 20. For examj)le, let us take the neighbourhood of Battle in Sussex, where, on the 14th of October 1066, the Normans under William the Conqueror finally overthrew the Saxon dynasty in England, and where William, to commemorate his victory, founded a splendid abbey, the high altar of which was fixed on the spot where the standard of Harold fell. From the grammar school above the town, beside the cross-roads, or better, from the height called Caldbec^ Hill immediately behind it, where the windmill stands, and where the Watch Oak'-^ stood, we have a fine \'iew of all the country round, and away south over the undulating ridges and hollows, fields, meadows, and woods to the south, towards Eastbourne and the heights which run out to the white chalk clift's of Beachy Head, enclosing Pevensey Bay, where the Normans landed and burnt their ships to prevent retreat. Watching the sun at noon from this height, it is seen nearly over Catsfield windmill, which stands prominently on one of the nearer 1 Popularly " Callback Hill," a corruption of Caldbec, or Cold Brook, the name of a stream which flows from its slope. 2 The name Watch Oak is probably derived from the times when beacons were erected upon eminences commanding views of the coast, in order to raise the country in case of invasion. — IValcott. INTKODUCTORY CHAPTER. 11 ridges between us and the sea. The south line then runs from Caldbec Hill a little to the left of Catsfield Mill, or, in technical language, the bearing of the mill from where we stand is south by west. Ha\ing fixed this main cardinal point, and having marked the compass out on the ground, we tind that Black Horse Mill, which rises high and clear near the top of the ridge beyond the town and the abbey, is almost exactly in the direction of the south- east point. Here then we have three prominent objects, the directions of which from one another we know, to serve as a basis for our map. Before leaving the hill we may notice that the main street of the toAvn descending the ridge into the valley, and the road towards Hastings continuing it up the opposite ascent, have nearly the same general du'ection as the line joining this point with Black Horse Mill, or that they run from north-west to south-east. This may serve for one day's work. 21. Another day, starting from the cross roads immediately under Caldbec Hill, we know that the south line runs close by Catsfield Mill, which we can see from this, and we can thus mark out a compass at once. Facing round with our backs to the south, we now note that the London road runs straight away in the opposite direction, and if we follow it a short way over the ridge we find it descending into the valley beyond, and climbing a farther ridge beyond, always in the same due north line. Coming back to the cross roads it may be next observed that the Lewes road past the Drill Hall and on towards the " Union," runs along the top of the ridge neither due west nor south-west, but between these two direc- tions, or west-south-west ; and that the road down into the main street of Battle follows exactly the direction of the south- east point. On coming home we may begin our map by marking down these roads in their proper dii-ections, as in Fig. 9. 22. On another occasion, coming back to the cross roads, the measurement of the high road through Battle may be made. Starting with our backs to the finger-post pointing to the London and Lewes roads, and walk- ing down the High Street, we note that 500 paces bring us to where Mount Street runs off to the left ; from that, 350 paces more down through the main street, past the " George " in the same south-east direction, bring us to the open space called the Bull Ring, opposite the great towered gateway of the abbey. From 12 THE LONDON GEOGKAPHY. this point the road bends a little more to the east between the high wall of the abbey enclosure and St. Mary's churchyard, for a distance also of 350 paces ; then it turns a little more to the right, or to the south-south-east, for 310 paces, down the hiU to the toll-gate, where the road to the powder-mills runs off to the right ; 200 paces more, south-east again, passing the road on the left which leads to the railway station, bring us to the bridge over the railway ; and for 400 paces more we ascend the ridge in the same direction. Next there is a bend more to the east for 250 paces, then an east- south-east stretch of 750 paces up the hill, and 300 paces more, south-east again, bring us opposite the Black Horse Mill on the left of the road. From this height we can look back to Caldbec Hill and the ridge on which the town stands, down which we have come, remarking also the steep descent on each side of where we are now standing, down through Bodehurst^ wood to the valley in which Sedlescomb lies on the right, and to the hollow between us and Fig. 10. Telham^ Hill on the left. We may also note that from this point Catsfield Mill is to our left, and that a line pointing towards it forms a right angle with the direction of Caldbec Hill. Catsfield 1 Popularly Bathuret ; Bodehurst — " the house in the thicker part of the wood." , 1 2 7'e;i = a rouud hill, and /iaTO = a home. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 13 Mill thus bears south-west from Black Horse Mill. This bearing, with that from the cross roads, will enable us to fix its position. Having noted down all the changes of direction, and the distances from point to point along the road (reckoned in paces), it will not be difficult to make a map of the road on paper at home, as shown (Fig. 10). Here, for convenience, a scale of about 1000 paces to an inch (uwrcr) has been adopted, but a much larger scale should be used in practice. 23. "We have now made sure of the central line of our map, and it will be easy to extend it in any dii-ection. Suppose we next follow the side road which we noticed branching oflf from the turn- pike gate, nearly at right angles to the main highway, or south-west from it (see Fig. 11). We find that it goes straight in this direction for about 1600 paces along the slope of the Abbey Park, which rises up to the old dormitory buildings on the right, and we note the little stream which runs (also to south-west) nearly parallel with it in the hollow on the left. At the end of the long straight piece the road turns to the left or south for another 400 paces, to where it crosses the road which runs east and west up Telham Hill on the left, and up Camp Hill, throvigh the hop-field on its steep slope, on the right towards Ninfield. At these cross roads we may notice that Caldbec Hill and the Catsfield windmill stand in almost exactly opposite directions from one another, and we know already that these two points are nearly north and south of one another, so that these cross roads are very nearly due south of Caldbec Hill or of the cross roads on the ridge near the Grammar School. This will test the accuracy of our measurements when we come to mark the road on our map ; as it is a smaller road than the main highway, it should be shown by a narrower double line. 24. Another day we may add the pathway which leaves the main road at the wicket beside the Abbey gateway, leading south- west, south-south-west, and then south-south-east, round the height of the Abbey Park, to join the road to the powder-mills. In this walk the stream in the deep hollow on the right, formed between the height of the Abbey Park and the high ridge along the top of which the Lewes road extends, wiU be noticed, as well as the lake which receives it at the base of Camp Hill. We may afterwards go along the powder-mills road to mark the place where the stream from this lake, passing beneath the bridge on the Ninfield road, joins the other little south-west flowing stream that we formerly noted running alongside the road from the turnpike. This is called in geographical language the confluence of the streams. Their right and left banks are those which rise on the right hand and on the left as we look in the direction in which the stream is flowing. 14 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. After the confluence the united streams form another lake, and thence, by the old powder-mills (now made into hop-kilns) on the left bank, run away south and south-east. 25. For another walk we may take the east road up Telham Hill, and add this to our map. On the way up the slope, at about 1000 paces from the cross roads, we come to the bridge over the very deep cutting which has been made to let the railway pass, and notice that the line at this point lies nearly north and south, or at right angles to the road. Knowing the position of this bridge, we shall be able to draw on our map the line of railway l^etween it and the bridge on the main highway, using a sign that will distinguish the railway from an ordinary road. As we climb higher up the ridge we liave a distinct \'iew across the hollow which separates us from the opposite height on which the Abbey stands, and of the ridges on each side of it. From this point also we can form the best idea of the battle-field. It was on the rounded slope now crowned by the Abbey, and on the ridge beneath Caldbec Hill, that Harold's Saxon Camp was pitched, guarding the only road to London.^ On reaching the end of the road up Telham Hill we find ourselves on the main road to Hastings, and returning by this way towards Battle we may note that the Telham Hill or Ninfield road branches ofl:' just 900 paces above, or south-east of, the Black Horse Mill. 26. Another day we may add Mount^ Street to the map, noting how it runs north along the side of the ridge, and then bends north- east away to Whatlington. Going up again from this to the wind- mill on Caldbec Hill, let us look this time more particularly at the 1 The Normans (about 60,000 men) coming up from the coast at Pevensey, are be- lieved to have first unfurled their flag at Standard Hill, near Ninfield, a few miles to the south-west of us, and to have marched thence, perhai)s along the very line of the road on which we are standing, to take up their positions liere on Camp Hill and along the slope of Telham Hill, or Heehelande, opposite the Saxon camp. Their ships had been burned behind them, so " that their only hope might lie in their courage and resolution, their only safety in victory." ..." When the Normans had given the signal of battle the first encounter began with a flight of arrows from both armies for some time ; then, setting foot to foot, they fought man to man, and maintained the battle a long while. But when the English, with admirable courage and bravery, had received their fiercest onset, the Norman horse furiously charged them with full career. When neitlier of these could break the army, they (the Normans), as they had before agreed, retreated, but kept their ranks in good order. The English, thinking they fled, broke their ranks, and witliout keeping any order, pressed hard upon the enemy ; but they, rallying their forces, charged afresh on every side with the thickest of them, and, encompassing them round, repulsed them with a mighty slaughter. Yet the English, having gotten the higher ground, stood out for a long time, till Harold himself was shot through with an arrow, and fell down dead. Then they presently turned their backs and betook them- selves every man to flight." " The Norman, proud and haughty with this victory, in memory of the battle erected an abbey ... in tliat place where Harold, after many wounds, died amongst the thickest of his enemies, that it might be, as it were, the eternal monument of the Norman victory. About this abbey there grew up afterwards a town of the same name." — (Camden's Britannia.) 2 Originally Montjoye, probably a memorial of the spot whither William rode in triumph at the conclusion of the battle, and of a mound of stones raised to com- memorate it.— Walcott. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 15 relief or rise and fall of the ground with which we have now become familiar. Evidently this, and the top of the ridge along which the Hastings road passes beyond the Black Horse Mill, are the highest parts of the ground. Between these heights, the ridge on which the town stands runs down to meet that up which the Hastings road ascends beyond the railway. To right and left of the town ridge are deep rounded hollows. That on the right we have ah-eady re- marked fi'om the Lewes road, and from the pathway round the Abbey Park ; the other descends immediately from Mount Street, and if we go down to the churchyard we can have a full view of it from behind the church. From this hollow the stream named the Caldbec runs away to the north-east, and we know that the stream passing the powder-mills flows south from the opposite hollow. The main street of Battle thus forms the water-parting of the streams of the district. When rain falls over it the rills which run down on one side of the highway go to join the powder-mills stream, and if we followed this down we should find it reaching the sea close to St. Leonard's. The rain which falls on the opposite side of the street is drained olf into the hollow from which the Caldbec flows to join other streamlets in forming the river that reaches the Channel near Winchelsea. 27. Having gained a clear idea of the form of the ground in repeated walks, we may now begin to mark out the relief of the district on our map, using what are termed hacliures, or short lines placed in the direction of the slope, and made stronger and jilaced closer together where the slope is steeper and higher, as shown in the sketch. This done, the map may be comjjleted by marking in the blocks of houses along the roads, and by writing the names of the more prominent objects opposite to each. 28. If we wished to represent the rise and fall of the ground along any particular line in a more distinct way than can be done by mapping, we should have recourse to what is called a section on that line. Take the l^ne of road between the Grammar School and Black Horse Mill for example. We have noticed in going over it that the road descends evenly down the High Street to the space in front of the Abbey gate, that from the Bull Ring on past St. Mary's Church it is nearly level, and that it descends from there more rapiilly to the toll-gate. Here again there is a more level piece, after which the road begins to ascend again over the railway bridge, and up the undulating ridge towards the Black Horse Mill. Looking Imck from this jioint, it is evident that Ave are upon higher ground than that on which the Grammar School stands. Without careful measurements by means of an instrument called a level or levelling telescope, we cannot And out very accurately the difl'erences 16 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. iMffi. Scale of One Mile. (1760 Yds.) i h S Scale of Paces. ^ E90 ipno 1600 2(100 Fig. 11. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 17 of height of each point along the road ; but we can get a very good general idea of the form of the ground without this. The part of the road before the railway bridge was reached was evidently the loivest ground that we passed over, for the road ascended on each side of it, and we may assume that the cross roads near the Gram- mar School are about 150 feet, and the road at the Black Horse Mill about 200 feet above this point. To represent a section of the road between these points, then, we may draw a horizontal line of the same length as their distance on our map (3400 paces of the scale), and suppose this line to represent the lowest level, or the level of the road at the toll-gate (upper section, Fig. 1 2). The left and right ends of this line will then represent the horizontal distance between the cross roads and the base of Black Horse Mill ; and distances along it of 850, 350, 310, and 200 paces, measured from the left end, will show the horizontal distances ^ of the Bull Ring, the level past the church, the toll-gate, and the railway bridge. We then measure off a distance of 150 feet (or 60 paces of the scale), and mark this distance upward vertically from the left end of the line we have drawn, to re- present the level of the cross roads. Next a distance of 200 feet (or 80 paces of the scale), marked up from the right end of the line, will show the height of the road at the Black Horse Mill above the lowest part. Between these highest levels and the lowest midway we can now draw an evenly-sloping line to above that point on the horizontal line which indicates the distance of the Bull Ring, to represent the uniform descent of the High Street ; then a level part to show the flat road past St. Mary's church ; and then a slope again down to touch the horizontal line at the lowest level near the railway ; and from that an undulating line sloping upward to represent the rise of the Hastings road to the Black Horse Mill, as shown below. Here then we have an imaginary view of the profile Fig. 12. of the road as it would appear if we had cut down the ground all 1 Tlic horizontal distances are strictly somewhat less than those measnrcil along the sloping ground ; but for om- present purpose this difl'ercnce may be disregarded. C 18 THE LOXDOX GEOGRAPHY. along it on one side to the level of tlie lowest part of it. This is called a section to a true scale, for we have used the same scale in repre- senting the horizontal and the vertical heights. In most cases where sections are drawn, however, a larger scale is used to represent the vertical heights than is employed to show the horizontal distance, for by so doing each smaller rise and fall of the ground is brought out more distinctly. The lower section, Fig. 12, in which the vertical distances have been exaggerated four times, the horizontal scale remaining the same, will make this e\ddent. It is important to bear this in mind in looking at any section that one may meet with in books or maps, and to inquire first of all what relation the vertical scale bears to the horizontal one : if these are the same, we have a true profile ; if they are different, then this difference must be clearly understood to prevent erroneous impressions. 29. For practice in mapping, the following examples may be worked out on the slate or on paper, using a scale of about four inches to represent 1000 paces ; but the practical mapping of a part of your own neighbourhood, iii the manner above shown, should in no case be neglected. 1. At a point which we shall call (a) on a road which runs due east and west, or at right angles to the direction of the suu at noon, a church spire is noticed bearing due north from us, and a hill top south-east. Walking east- ward along the road for 1000 paces, it is noticed that the church spire now hears north-west, and going on another 500 paces, the dii'ection of the hill is at right angles to the road, or due south. What are the distances_of the church and of the hill from the point (a) ? 2. Draw a rough map from the following notes : — i Ship anchored opposite a small bay. Rowed on shore to west point of bay, and ascended knoll at end of low line of hills which extends along the coast towards north-west. Call the knoll (a). From it ship distant 6000 yards bearing south-east. The opposite headland of bay (call it e) bears exactly east. From knoll look to north and east across a valley ^vith small stream, and hills beyond, on which note two peaks ; one (call it c) bears due north, other (call it d) bears north-north-east. Head of bay bears north-east. Walked along hills from (a), moving north-west, and at 3000 yards observed peak (d) bearing north-east. On the left the coast was distant 1000 yards. Went on in same direction (north-west), 3000 yards more, and came to point (b) on the line -of hills extending from (a) ; (b) is top of cliff rising abruptly from sea. Beyond it coast-line goes oft', bearing west-north-west. At (b) observed bearing to peak (c) north-east. From (h) turned to right, and walked due east 4250 yards, when I found myself with knoll (a) bearing due south, and peak (c) due north. Going on 1000 yards more, crossed the stream, which came do\vn from the north-west, and flowed ofi' into the sea on the bearing of the ship, whicli we saw about five miles off (8800 yards). Going on in the same direction 2000 yards more, peak (d) was seen to bear due north. Another 1 From one of the examination papers for the prize medal of the Royal Geographical Society. HISTOKICAL. 1 9 1250 yards brought us to head of bay ; the ship now bearing nearly due south, and the east headland of the bay (e) bearing south-east. The whole distance from (b) to the head of the bay had been 8500 yards. The bay from this jioint curved slightly round on either side to the headlands (a) and (e). This line of hills on which were peaks (c) and {d) ran round and ended in the headland (e). 3. Draw a section of the OTOund from tlie following data, to a Leaving the house, walked up a path which leads up by a steep slope to the top of a hill ; descended the opposite undulating slope to a bridge over a stream in the bottom of a wide valley ; ascended an opposite gentle and uniform slope to the top of a vertical cliff overlooking the sea. The horizontal distance from the house to the top of the hill was 750 paces, from the hill- top to the bridge 1400 paces, and from the bridge to the top of the cliff 1800 paces. The house is 200 feet, the hill 480, the bridge over stream 50, and the cliff 250 feet above the sea-level. II. SKETCH OF HISTOEICAL GEOGEAPHY. 1. 1000-450 B.C. In exactly tlie same way as you liave been gathering informa- tion about your own home country, all the knowledge that we yet possess about the surface of the world we live in has been gradually gained. The geographers of ancient times, beginning with the district in which they lived, little by little extended the circle of their knowledge both by their own journeys and by studying the accounts given by travellers and voyagers outward from that known centre, learning from them what directions they had taken, whether towards the sunrising or simsetting, the north or the south ; and the times and distances between one point and another of the route ; and by laying down these itineraries on their maps. Little by little the clouds of ignorance were thus rolled back- wards, till knowledge spreading westward joined that which had grown out eastward round the globe. Though in our own day the unkno^Ti has been chased into the most inaccessible corners of the earth, the same process of extending knowledge is in progress, and geographers of the present day are ever gathering accounts of new journeys past the borders of the unknown regions, each of which contributes a little towards the removal of the darkness which still hangs over these " ends of the earth." We shall perhaps gain the best idea of the gradual expansion of knowledge if we go back nearly to the earliest times of whicli we have any definite historical accounts, and fionr that as a starting- 20 THE LONDON GEOGKAPHY. point, picture to ourselves tlie world as kno-vvTi to the more civilised nations, at intervals iip to the present time. The little maps which have been designed to accompany these chapters exhibit the known world at twelve such periods ; an appearance of cloud covers the skirts of each, leaving unveUed only those lands and seas which were the scene of the recorded events of history, and this lifts or rolls back as the limits of knowledge gradu- ally extend. Each is on the same scale, and on each the different States and Empires of the period are marked out as far as the scale will admit, so that they combine at a glance the geography and history of the ages to which they refer, and from one to another the rise and fall of the great kingdoms of the world may be traced. 1. About 1000-450 b.c. 1. In the earliest times of which we have any records, tlie more civilised nations of the world were those inhabiting the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and there accordingly the great events of ancient history have their scenes. The commerce, and along with that the geographical knowledge, of the Egyjitians, the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the Greeks and Romans, all centred and spread outward from the deep bays and harbours of that inland sea. The Phoenicians especially, the old inhabitants of the fertile country which slopes down from Mount Lebanon to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, where Sidon and Tyre were great seaports, were the sailors and traders of early times. Within the space of three centuries (from about B.C. 1300 to 1000) they explored all the islands and shores of the Mediterranean, and covered these with their forts, factories, and cities, while their ships ploughed the sea in all directions. They colonised Cyjjrus, and, after mastering the rich islands of the JEgean, sailed farther west to Sicily and Sardinia, founding also the city of Carthage, destined to be the centre of an opulent and powerful state on the North African coast, which grew in greatness as the golden age of the mother country of Phoenicia began to wane. From Sardinia and the Balearic Isles these indefatigable explorers pushed farther on through the narrow Strait of Gibraltar into the wide Atlantic, building the town of Oaddir (the present Cadiz) on the south-west of Spain in a country wliich gave them fabulous wealth of silver, iron, and lead ; boldly venturing northward across the stormy Bay of Biscay, they reached the tin-yielding coasts of Cornwall, and loaded their ships with cargoes of that metal at the Scilly Isles. Sailing southward also from the gates of the Mediterranean, they dis- covered tlie islands we now know as the Canaries, obtaining from their shores the shell-fish which yielded the costly Tyrian purple. It was in this direction also that Hanno, the Carthaginian, led a famous expedition, consisting, it is said, of 60 ships, with 30,000 men and women on board of them, to extend discovery along the African coasts and to found Phoenician tovras and colonies. In this voyage Hanno went south perhaps as far as our present colony of Sierra Leone. Himilco, commanding another fleet, starting from Gaddir, coasted Spain and Gaul, and reached Great Britain, which he calls Alfionn (Albion) and lerne, a sacred island of the west, the modern Ireland. While some of their navigators were thus exploring the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, others seem to have found their way out by f,ese'-U HISTORICAL. 21 the narrow Red Sea to the Indies, and the overland caravans carrying their manufactures appear to have made them acquainted with all the lands eastward of Syria and Palestine. 2. One of the oldest descriptions of the world that has been preserved to our times is that of the Greek historian, traveller, and geographer, Herodotus, who lived about 450 (484-408) years before Christ, at the time when Greek art was at its zenith. With Athens and Greece for a centre, he describes the countries immediately surrounding the Mediterranean, and shows that knowledge had then spread out north and eastward to the regions beyond the Black Sea and the Caspian, to Persia and the confines of India and the Arabian Sea. Yet, strange to say, the name of Rome, which at that time was a flourishing city, is not mentioned once, and of the Phoenician and Carthaginian discoveries outside the Pillars of Hercules he had but an imperfect idea. He ■was minutely acquainted, liowever, with Greece, the ^gean islands, and Asia Minor ; he travelled also to Phcsnicia, through Egyjit as far as the Cataracts of the Nile, to Arabia and Mesopotamia, and saw the Euphrates and Tigris, and the cities of Babylon and Ecbatana. Africa is described by him as being surrounded by the sea. 3. In the century previous to that in which he lived, the Persians under Cyrus had established a mighty empire which extended beyond the present area of Persia to the Indies on the east, and westward over Asia Minor and Syria. The ancient empires of Assyria and Babylonia also fell under the dominion of Cyrus, and his successors extended the Persian Empire to Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egyjit. Thrace and Macedonia were also added to the empire, but the attempts to subdue Greece, made only a year or two before the birth of Herodotus, were completely foiled. Three successive invasions of Greece ended disastrously for Persia : in the first the invading fleet was shipwrecked off Mount Athos; the second was pushed back at Mara- thon ; and the third, under Xerxes, was repulsed at the pass of ThermopyloR, at Salamis, and at PUdcea. 4. At the period of our first little chart, then, the decadence of the great Persian Empire had already begun. Greece was becoming a strong power, and had flourishing colonies all round the Mediterranean and Black Seas, at Syracuse in Sicily, on the southern shores of Italy, at Massilia (the present Marseilles), on the coast of Spain, at Cyrcne in North Africa, at Cyjirus, at Byzantium (Constantinople), on the Thracian coasts, at Theodosia (Kaffa) near the Cimmerian Bosporus, in the Tauric Chersonese (Crimea), and at many points between these. Carthage had already risen from its condition of a colony to that of a great independent state, which held all the North African coast west of Cyrenaica, the rich country of Tartessus (Tarshish, Andalucia), and the gates of the Mediterranean between. The Carthaginians had come in contact with the Greeks in Sicily, and in their first trial of strength the Carthaginian army under Hamilcar had been defeated. linm^, had been founded for perhaps 300 years. Already the Romans had taken the lead in Latium, and the Re- public was in constant warfare with its neighbours on all sides — the southern Etruscans, the Volscians, and the ^qui. Thus the great events of this period were clustered round the Mediterranean shores. As yet the unknown peoples of the west and north beyond these were vaguely called tlie Hyperboreans by the Greeks, "the dwellers behind the north wind ; " and eastward beyond Persia and the Indies Herodotus could only mark "unknowTi deserts" on his map. 22 THE LONDON GEOGEAPHY. 2. 450-325 B.C. 1. With the defeats that resulted iu the attempts to subdue Greece, the decadence of the great Persian Empire may be said to have begun, and it now became a prey to internal conflicts. One of the most memorable of these was the revolt and expedition of the younger Cyrus against his brother the emperor Artaxerxes, which led to the battle of (Junaxa (401 B.C.), near Babylon, in which Cyrus was slain, and from which Xenophon made his adventurous retreat at the head of the ten thousand Greek mercenaries who had joined the expedition of Cjtus. Civil wars had also broken out between the States of Greece, and soon after the date of the battle of Cuuaxa the Spartans gained the ascendency over the Athenian State, which had been the ruling one at the period of the Persian invasions. These troubles gave occasion for the interfer- ence of Macedonia, a State which lay to the north of Thessaly, on the outskirts of the Greek nations, and which had recovered its independence of the Per- sians after the battle of Platsea. 2. Under Philip II. Macedonia grew in prosperity and power ; he subdued the southern Greek States, was appointed general of all the Greek forces against Persia, and was preparing for an invasion of that country when he was assassinated (b.C. 336). His son, Alexander, not yet twenty years of age, then ascended the throne, and took up the command of the forces levied against Persia. After putting dovm several revolts at home with a strong hand, he crossed the Hellespont l (334 B.C.) with 30,000 foot and 5000 horse, attacked and defeated the Persians at the river Granicus [Koja Chai). To this succeeded a victorious march through Asia Minor to the defiles of the Cilician mountains, in which Darius III. had stationed his army. At Issus,''& seaport at the head of the giilf of Iskenderun (from Iskender = Alexander), the famous battle was fought, in which the treasures as well as the family of Darius fell into the hands of the conqueror, the king himself fleeing to the Euphrates. The whole country eastward now lay open before him, and he turned south towards Phcenicia and Syria, occujiying Damascus, and conquering Tyi-e. Advancing to Egyjit, he was welcomed there as a deliverer from the Persian yoke, and founded Alexandria in the Nile Delta (331 B.C.), which became one of the greatest cities of ancient times. 3. In Africa Alexander advanced as far through the Libyan desert as the oasis in which dwelt the oracle of Jupiter Ammon (Siwah), and returning thence eastward, went against Darius, who had collected a new army in the plain of Mesopotamia. The decisive battle near Arbela, a small town east of Mosul, opened the way to Babylon and Susa, and to Perscpolis, the capital of Persia, which was entered in triumph. Thence Alexander pursued Bessus, a satrap of Bactriana (the modern Balkh), through Iran or Persia proper, across the Oxus to Sogdiana (Bokhara), and penetrated to the farthest known limits of Asia, defeating the Scythian barbarians (probably the ancestors of the later Turks) on the banks of the Jaxartes. 4. Two years later, Alexander proceeded to the conquest of India, then known only by name to Europeans. He crossed the river Indus near the modern Attack, and marched through the land now knowTi as the Panjab, Turning at the Hyphasis (the modern Satlej), he caused a fleet to be built, in which he sent one division of his army down the stream, another section fol- lowing the banks of the river, and fighting its way through successive Indian hosts. Having at length reached the ocean, he ordered one division to sail to the Persian Gulf, while he led another back through the fearful deserts of 1 Dardanelles. HISTOEICAL. 23 Gedrosia (the modern Baluchistan), where a great part of his force perished for want of food and water, and was buried in the sands. A third division came back through Arachosia and Drangiana (the modern Afghanistan), but only a fourth part of the army that had set out vdih him arrived again in Persia, 5. The second of our little maps represents the short-lived Macedonian empire of Alexander, at the date of his return to Persia, when his power was at its height, and when ambassadors from all parts of the then known world — from Libya, Italy, Carthage, and Sc^-thia, from the Celts (of Gaul or France), and the Iberians of the Simnish peninsula — came to his court to secure his favour. To his victorious career the world owed a vast increase of geographi- cal knowledge ; all eastern Asia had been unveiled, and the road to India, with its magnificent wealth, was disclosed to Europeans. Westward also, about Alexander's time, the geography of the Greeks was greatly extended by Pj'theas, a bold navigator of the Greek colony of Massilia (Marseilles), who, from Gadeira (Cadiz), coasted Iberia and the country of the Celts (Prance), and reached Britain. He followed the southern and eastern shores of the islands, and, after six days' sail from the Orcades (Orkney Islands), discovered Thule, a laud of fogs in the north, which has been vari- ously identified as the Shetland Islands, the Norwegian coast, or even Iceland. Pytheas also appears to have sailed round Jutland into the Baltic, proving the existence of sea to the north of Eurojie, which Herodotus doubted. In Italy the Eomans were continuing their struggles with the neighbour- ing nations. The whole of southern Etruria had yielded to their supremacy, and was kept in check by Roman garrisons ; while towards the south, at this time, a terrible conflict was in progress with the heroic Samnite highlanders. Of Sicily the Carthaginians held the western, the Greek colonists the eastern half, a brief lull having taken place in the fierce wars which had been waging between these powers for the possession of the island, during which the pros- perity of the great fortified city and seaport of SjTacuse was rapidly reviving. 3. 325 B.C.-300 A.D. 1. After the death of Alexander the Great, the vast Macedonian Empire that he had raised was divided among those of the generals of his armies who had been most emineut under his rule ; but for twenty years afterwards in- cessant wars prevailed, culminating in the battle of Ipsus in Phrygia (B.C. 301). Four of these generals became pre-eminent, and each formed for himself an iutlepeudent kingdom. Ptolemy held Egypt, Libya, and northern Syria, and soon after added Judsea to his possessions ; Cassander ruled in Greece and Macedonia proper ; Lysimachus, in Thrace and western Asia Minor ; and Seleucus brought under his power all the remaining portions of the former Macedonian Empire, from Asia Minor to the Indus. The last-named ruler even extended his expeditions beyond the limit reached by Alexander, and advanced into India as far as the Ganges (301 B.C.) 2. While these events were in progress in the lands east of the Mediterranean, the Romans in Italy had been carrjdng on a sanguinary war with the Samnite highlanders. The heroism of these mountaiueers was unavailing against the military genius of the Romans, who, shortly after the date of the first partition of Alexander's empire, were extending their power over the whole southern peninsula of Italy. Here the Ronums next came in contact with the Greek colonists, and the Tarentines,i in the name of their fellow-countrymen in 1 Tarentum (Taranto), see map or Italy. 24 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. south Italy, invited Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, the country on the opposite side of the Adriatic Sea, to command their troops against the enemy. The strange appearance and gigantic size of the elephants brouglit by PjTrhus, in imitation of the Indian kings in battle, gained a temporary success for him against the Romans ; but soon after he gave up the contest and passed over into Sicily, to aid the Greeks there against the Carthaginians (B.C. 278). All southern Italy acknowledged the supremacy of Rome, and distant nations began to learn that a new power had risen in the world, Ptolemy of Egj^)t sending an embassy to conclude treaties with the Republic. 3. Now followed the terrible contests between Rome and Carthage, which, in the three Punic ^ wars, lasted for more than a century. The first of these (264-241 B.C.) was waged merely for the possession of Sicily, and during it the Roman navy was created, which, notwithstanding terrible disasters, finally wrested from Carthage the sovereignty of the seas. At the end of this first Punic war the Carthaginians had lost their hold on Sicily and Sardinia, which were transformed into Roman provinces. " 4. About the middle of the third century the Carthaginian influence was much extended in Iberia (Sisain), and a large extent of territory was brought under subjection. Hamilcar founded the city of Barcelona, and his son-in- law Hasdrubal that of New Carthage (Cartagena), and concluded a treaty with Rome, whereby it was stipulated that he should not advance beyond the Iberus (Ebro). Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar, succeeded him in the penin- sula, and by attacking and destroying Saguntum (Murviedro), a city which had been founded by the Greeks, and which had become celebrated for its commerce and wealth, violated the treaty and gave cause for a declaration of war by the Romans (218 B.C.) 5. A series of wars with the Gauls now extended Roman power over northern Italy, and its influence began to be felt on the eastern shores of the Adriatic. The second Punic war (218-201 B.C.), the gi-eat events of which were the crossing of the Alps by Hannibal (most proliably by the pass now known as the Little St. Bernard), the 'defeat of the Romans at Lake Trasi- mene, and at Caniuv, resulted in the final overthrow of the great Carthaginian leader at Zanui," when terms of jieace were imposed by the conqueror which reduced Carthage almost to the condition of a tributary state. The Spanish possessions of Carthage, like the Sicilian, now passed to the Romans, who formed out of them the province of Hispania Citerior, the north and eastern, and Ulterior, the south and western, or most distant from Rome. 6. An alliance formed by the Macedonians with Hannibal after the battle of Cannae gave cause for the hostile advance of the Romans in their direction also, and the three Macedonian and Greek wars which succeeded led to the establishment of the Roman protectorate over the whole of Greece, and the dismemberment of the Macedonian possessions in Europe and Asia Minor. 7. Although the Carthaginians had been compelled to accept abject terms of peace, their resources had not been utterly destroyed, and Carthage again became sufficiently powerful to excite the jealousy of the Romans, and to draw their armies towards it. After a siege of three years, Carthage was stormed, burned, and razed to the ground, and the once mighty Carthaginian empire vanished for ever from the earth (b.c. 146). 8. Under the six Ptolemies who succeeded to Alexander's great general of that name on the throne of Egyjit up to the date of the fall of Carthage, Alexandria had become the seat of the intellectual cultivation that had resided in Greece, as well as the centre of the world's commerce. It was in the famous 1 Or Phoenician, in allusion to the descent of the Carthaginians. 2 300 miles south-west of Carthage. HISTORICAL. 2 5 school of Alexandria that Euclid taught mathematics, about three hundred years before Christ. Hither also Eratosthenes of Cyrene, one of the most eminent of ancient astronomers, was called by Ptolemy Euergetes to superin- tend the great royal library. The name of Eratosthenes (276-194 B.C.) will ever be remembered in geography, as it was he who first attempted to discover the magnitude of the eartli by the measurement of an arc of the meridian, the same process that is employed at the present day. 9. The next great extension of Roman power was in Asia Minor, where Attalus, one of the successors of Alexander's general Lysimachus, be- queathed to Rome the protectorate of Pergamus, which was formed into the province of Asia. Then followed the conquest of Transalpine Gaul, named the Province ("Provence") to distinguish it from the rest of the country. North of the mountains the Romans first came in hostile contact with the Cimbri and Teutones, in the valleys of Noricum (Tyrol) and at Aquce- Scxtice (Aix, in the Alps of Dauphiny). In Africa the overthrow of King Jugurtha of Numidia (Algeria) and of King Juba in Mauritania (Marocco) added these regions also to the list of Roman provinces. 10. Now the strength of the Roman arms was turned towards Asia, in the three fierce wars with Mithridates of Pontus and his ally Tigranes of Armenia, against whom they were finally successful, establishing Roman authority over all Asia Minor. The last defeat of Mithridates on the Euphrates, in 66 B.C., was followed by a brilliant career of success. Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine were reduced to a state of dependence ; and to the horror of the Jews the holy city of Jerusalem was taken by storm and its walls razed to the ground (63 B.C.) 11. Not long after this, Julius CaBsar began his splendid campaigns in Gaul, conquering the whole of that region for Rome, driving the German tribes towards the Rhine, and invading Albion, to which he gave the name Britannia (55 B.C.) In the civil war which followed the assassination of Caesar, Marcus Antonius, the ruler of the Eastern Roman world, was aided against his rival Octavianus (afterwards Emperor Augustus) by Queen Cleo- patra of Egypt, but was defeated in the naval battle of Actium,i and his death and that of Cleopatra soon following, Egypt became henceforth a Roman pro- vince. Augustus gathered up into his own hands all civil and military power,' and the Roman Empire began (29 B.C.) At the beginning of the Christian era the Roman Empire had spread out nearly to its greatest limits. In Europe the lines of the Rhine and the Danube marked its northern boundary ; all Asia Minor and Syria had been subjected, and the whole of North Africa, from Egyjjt to the Atlantic, acknowledged Roman authority. 12. From this time onward to the date of our third little map (represent- ing the Empire in the time of Constantine) the chief military events were the final conquest of Britain as far north as the Firths of Forth and Clyde by Agricola, and its formation into a prefecture of Gaul, governed by a vice- regent resident at Ehoracum (York) ; the conquest of Daeia, the country north of the lower Danube ; the victorious invasion of Armenia and Parthia ; and the subjugation of all the Nile valley as far as Nubia by Trajan. Under Constantine the Great two great changes took place — the introduc- tion of Christianity as the religion of the State, and the transference of the seat of government from Rome to Byzantium (a.d. 330), which was re-named after the Emperor, Constantinople. 13. Persia at this time, under the Sassanian dynasty, attained a height of prosperity and power such as it had never before reached, and against it even the veteran Roman legions could gain no lasting laurels. 1 At the entrance to the Gulf of Arta. 26 THE LONDON GEOGKAPHY. 14. It is not till after B.C. 260 that the history of China begins to be definitely recorded. At this time the chief or king Tsiu (whence China) gained the ascendency and united the various tribes of that region into one empire. Now also the great wall was completed as a protection against the more barbarous Hiong-nou (Huns) or Tatars of the north. Shortly after the beginning of the Christian era the Chinese seem to have begun intercourse with the Parthians and to have known the Roman Emi^ire as Ta-tsin ; and about the time of Constantine's establishment of his new capital the Chinese Emjieror's court was fixed at Nan-King, the soiithern cai^ital. 15. The increase of geographical knowledge during the period in which Rome was spreading out its power in all directions could not fail to be very considerable. Already in the latter part of the first century B.C. a general survey of the Roman Empire had been begun by the collection and arrange- ment of the itineraries of the roads to j)laces in the empire. One of these (called the Peutingerian table after the antiquary who found a copy of it in a monastery in Bavaria in the fifteenth century) traces the main roads of all the region stretching from Britain to the mouth of the Gauges in India. Straho of Poutus was one of the great geograjihers of this period, and he wrote an account of Europe and Africa, and of Asia, in which his knowledge extended as far as China. But it was from Claudius Ptolemy, the celebrated astronomer and geographer, who lived in the learned city of Alexandi-ia about 150 A.D., that geogra2Ay received the greatest advancement in ancient times — one which made itself felt even down to the fifteenth century. He con- structed a series of twenty-six maps, with a general mapi of the world, in illus- tration of his eight books of universal geography. His information extended from Thule (Shetland) in the north to the Niger and the Nile lakes in Africa, and eastward to the obscurely known region of China and the island of Taprobane (Ceylon). 4. 300-500 A.D. 1. Fully half a century before the civil discords of the Roman Empire had been temporarily abated by the genius of Constantine, the whole of Europe beyond the Roman frontier, tlie almost unknown nortli, had begun to ferment and to pour forth wave after wave of barbarian hordes. Against these the Roman Empire, distracted by discords, could not prevail. 2. The Goths, a people of Germanic origin, had already once broken through the Roman province of Dacia,^ crossing the Black Sea had ravaged the northern shores of Asia Minor, and had advanced as far as Greece, pillaging and burning the famous cities of Athens, Corinth, and Argos. The Vandals, who are first known as the inhabitants of the Bohemian mountains, hence called Vandalici Montes, burst like a flood into Gaul, and after ravag- ing that region, swept south through the passes of the Pyrenees into Spain, and finally settled in the south of that country, to which they gave the name Vandalitia, the modern Andalucia. The Franks, or freemen, a confederation of the trilies inhabiting the borders of the lower Rhine, made incessant incur- sions through the low countries into Gaul, where they finally overthrew the Roman dominion. 3. In the reign of Constantine, the Goths had been obliged to sue for peace with the Romans, but not long after his death they once more engaged the legions in a three years' war. The Goths now began to be distinguished as the Ostrogoths, or Goths of the east, the branch which inhabited the shores of the Black Sea ; and the Visigoths, or Goths of the west, extending along the Danube. 1 Transylvania and Walachia. HISTORICAL. 2 7 4. Tlie Huns, a people of Asiatic origin, probably identical with tlie Scj-thians (Turks), now appear on the scene. Tliey invaded Europe through tlie country of the Alani, a pastoral people living on the great steppes between the Volga and the Don ; having conquered them and incorporated the sur- vivors, they advanced into the country of the Visigoths and drove these people across the Danube into Moesia (modern Bulgaria), occupying the country they had abandoned ; afterwards they also crossed the Danube, as the allies of the Goths against the Komans. 5. Under Alaric, the Visigoths invaded Italy, sacked Rome, and ravaged the peninsula. Subsequently, under the successors of Alaric, they withdrew into southern Gaul and crossed the mountains into Spain, beginning a series of struggles there with the Vandals and the Romans. The fatal rivalries of the Roman governors of Spain and Africa now led to the passage of a resist- less horde of the Vandals across the Strait of Gibraltar, and to the devastation and ruin of all the region between the sliores of the Atlantic and Cyrene, to the loss of Carthage, and the dissolution of the Roman Empire in Africa. Hence the Vandals spread over Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily ; they invaded Italy also, and plundered Rome for fourteen days, mutilating and defacing the works of art in the city. 6. After his conquests in the region of the Danube, Attila, king of the Huns, turned his course of invasion westward, and being joined by the Ostro- goths, penetrated into Gaul, and was defeated there by the united Romans and Visigoths in a sanguinary battle near the site of the present city of Chalons-sur-Mame. A year later, however, he recovered strength, and in- vaded Italy, devastating its northern plains and driving their inhabitants to seek refuge in those marshy lagoon islands on which Venezia, afterwards the gi-eat city of Venice, was founded. Rome itself was saved by the mediation of Pope Leo, only to be plundered three years later by the Vandals, whose progress we have already traced. After the death of Attila, Odoacer, who had been his ambassador at the court of Constantinople, put himself at the head of the barbarians who had flocked into Italy, and finally crushed the Roman power throughout the peninsula. He in turn, however, was overthrown by Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, who now became master of Italy. 7. The contests with the northern invaders in Gaiil had withdrawn thither the greater part of the Roman troops quartered in Britain, and the few remain- ing were taken across to the Continent in the beginning of the fifth century. The Britons, left defenceless, and harassed by the Picts and Scots, invited the Jutes, the Germanic inhabitants of the opposite shores of the North Sea, to their aid, and they, having repelled the invaders, began the conquest of the island for themselves, and established their kingdom in Kent. They were soon followed by the Saxons, who took up the southern and central portions of the country, where the names Essex (East Saxons), Middlesex, Sussex, still in use, and Wessex, extending from Surrey to the peninsula of Cornwall, recall their divisions of the land. Cornwall itself remained in the hands of its Celtic inhabitants. 8. Tims, at the period represented in the fourth map, the great Roman Empire had shrunk down to the limits of the Eastern Roman (also called the Byzantine or Greek) Empire, and was restricted to tlie countries which lie round the eastern end of the Mediterranean. The Vandals had established their rule along north Africa ; the Visigoths ruled in Spain ; the Ostrogothic monarchy of Theodoric the Great extended over Italy, France, and all the countries round the Alps as far as the middle Danube ; the Franks, under Clovis, had possession of the whole of Gaul between the Loire and Somme ; Persia, still under the energetic Sassanian djiiasty, not only maintained its 28 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. integrity as an empire, but had begun to repel the Roman power in Asia and had added part of Armenia. 5, 500-800 A.D. 1. At the period represented in the last map we have seen that the Persians in the east were successfully opposing the Byzantine Empire, and extending their dominion ia Asia. Westward, however, the arms of the Byzantine Empire were triumphant, the reigu of the Emperor Justinian being rendered famous by the exj)edition of his great general Belisarius to Africa, where, after a cam- paign of two years, he completely overthrew the Vandals and led their king captive to Constantinople. In a second war, Belisarius wrested all southern Italy from the Ostrogoths, pursuing them northward to Rome and Ravenna, beginning the re-conquest of the peninsula, which was completed by his suc- cessor the imperial general Narses, after which the Ostrogoths disappear as a distinct nation. 2. At this time, under Khosru, the greatest of the great monarchs of the Sassanian dynasty, the Persian Empire stretched from the Red Sea to the Indus, and from Arabia far into Central Asia. Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Asia Minor, were one after another wrested from the Byzantine Empire : Jerusalem was stormed and plundered, and a similar fate befell Alexandria. The victorious Persians had even reached to Chalcedon, opposite Constantinople, when the fortune of war turned, and the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius began a magnificent revenge. 3. Having organised a Greek and barbarian army, Heraclius landed and encamped on the famous plain of Issus in Cilicia, and having completely routed the Persian army sent against him, forced his way through the Taurus into Pontus, crossed Armenia, made allies of the barbarians north of the Caucasus, and with their aid attacked Media, and penetrated to Ispahan, in- flicting repeated defeats on the Persians in the heart of their country, and giving the death-blow to the Sassanian dynasty. 4. At the height of the fame of Heraclius, however, a new and terrible power arose in the south. During all the changes of empire in the countries east of the Mediterranean the tribes of Arabia had maintauied a brave inde- pendence ; neither the Babylonian nor Assyrian kings, neither Egyptians nor Per- sians, could reduce them to subjection ; and even though the Romans imder Trajan had penetrated far into the country, only the northern chieftains were made tributary to the empire. The Himyarides of Yemen, the district bordering on the Red Sea, had stoutly repelled an expedition in the time of Augustus. They carried on commerce across the Indian Ocean with Persia and Syria, and had planted many colonies on the opposite African coasts. The tribes of Yemen dwelt in towns, and cultivated the soil, but the most of the Arabs were nomadic as now, and they retained their ancient pagan fetish worship. About 600 A.D. Christianity penetrated into the peninsula, where Judaism had been introduced by emigrants after the destruction of Jerusalem, and a religious ferment began to move the minds of the thoughtful. It was soon after this time that Mohammed, who was born at Mecca in 570, received his first divine communication in the solitudes of Mount Hira, near Mecca, and began to inveigh against the superstition of his time. Persecuted, and unable to find a hearing in his own city, he took refuge in Medina,^ and at once assumed the position of judge and ruler of the most powerful of the Arab tribes. He now went to war in the name of God against the enemies of Islam, 1 The Hedjrah, or emigration of Mohammed to Medina, gives the starting-point of the Moslem calendar. ' TfuVftV HISTORICAL. 2 9 and gained a victory over the Meccans at Bedr, after which they concluded a peace with him. He now sent his missionaries abroad over Arabia, and they carried his doctrine into Persia, to the court of Heraclius, to Abyssinia, and to Egj-^jt. Tlie King of Persia received his messenger with scorn, and had him executed ; this led to the first war with the Moslems, in which the latter were defeated. 5. The power of the new religion was, however, secured in Arabia, and shortly before his death Mohammed had made extensive preparations for expeditions against SjTia and the Byzantines. Abu-Bekr, the first " Calif ^^ or "Successor" of Mohammed, carried war into Babylonia, and after several victories over the troops of Heraclius completed the conquest of Syria. Omar, the second Calif, pushed the war of conquest with increased vigour ; Jerusalem fell into his hands, and he caused the mosque which bears his name to be built over the site of the temple of Solomon. He next invaded Persia, and subdued the whole of that region. Amru, one of his generals, such was the prestige of the Arabs, took possession of Egypt for the Calif without opposition, and Barca and Tripoli were also subdued. 6. At the time of Omar's death (644) the Saracens ^ had overrun in the short space of ten years all the lands between Armenia and Khiva in Asia, and the Syrtes in North Africa. In the time of Othman, the Mohammedan power was extended westward over Mauretania or Marocco, and the Byzantine posses- sions were restricted to the neighbourhood of New Carthage. The seat of the Califate was now removed from Medina to Danmscus in Syria ; Asia Minor was ravaged, and inefl'ectual siege was laid to Constantinople. Before the beginning of the eighth century Carthage had been taken, and the Byzantine dominion in Africa annihilated. The Califate now rose to the zenith of its prosperity, and the conquest of Turkistan in central Asia was rapidly followed by the invasion of Spain at the oj)posite extremity of the Arab Empire. The Moors," as the Arabs or Saracens are called in Sjianish history, under Tarik, crossed the straits from Ceuta, and effected a landing at Algeciras, near Gibraltar. Roderick, the last king of the Ostrogoths, met the invader at Xerez de la Frontera (711). Nine days of battle ensued, and in a single combat with Tarik, the Gothic king was slain ; the victory was decisive for the Moslems, and it gave them the mastery over nearly the whole of Spain (except the mountainous country of Asturias in the north), as well as the outlying province of Septimania (Languedoc, in southern France). 7. We may now turn to glance at the movements which were taking place in northern Europe during this rapid spread of the Mohammedan Empire in the south. Events in Italy have been already traced up to the defeat of the Ostrogoths, after which the country was placed under the rule of an Exarch or delegate of the Byzantine Emperor, who had his capital at Ravenyia. The first of these delegates had only held the country for fifteen years when the Lom- bards,'' a Germanic people originally from the lower Elbe, poured over the Alps from Pannonia (Lower Austria), bringing with them numbers of other German tribes, and conquered all north and central Italy. Here in the course of time these barbarians became assimilated with the peoples they had subjected, exchanged their rudeness for refinement, and their German for the Latin tongue. 8. The first or Merovingian (from Merwig, a chief of the fifth century) 1 Probably from Sharkeyn, "eastern people," as opposed to Maghribe, "western people," as the inhabitants of Marocco are called. 2 Lat. Mauri, dark ; Span. Moras. 3 Longobardi, referring either to their long beards or to their battle-axes (parta or harte). 30 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. dynasty of the Frankish kings, to which Clovis belonged, gave place to the Carlovingian, in which Charles, surnanied Martel, was one of the most promi- nent rulers. His reign was marked by wars with the surrounding tribes of the Saxons and Germans, but especially by the stop which l>e put to the victorious advance of the Saracens northward from Spain, whose power had filled all Christendom with alarm. He defeated them in a great battle fought between Puidiers and Tours in 732. His son Pepin le Bref, taking advantage of the disputes which arose about the succession to the Lombard throne, invaded Italy. It was left to his son Charlemagne, however, who crossed the Alps from Geneva with two armies, by the Great St. Bernard and Mont Cenis passes, to complete the overthrow of the Lombard kingdom, which had lasted for two centuries. This monarch also completed the subjection of the Saxons in the northern border of his kingdom, driving them to the Elbe, and from the Moors in the south he wrested and added to his dominion all the country from the Pyrenees to the Ebro, his empire extending also on the side of Germany as far as Pannouia, where he had subdued the Avari. 9. We left Britain at 'the end of the last period when the Jutes and Saxons had established themselves in the south and centre of the present England. Soon after this the Angles, a third Germanic tribe from the country east of the Elbe, made a succession of descents on the coasts of Suflblk and Norfolk, as well as in Scotland between the Tweed and Forth, Eventually these last comers obtained possession of all the portions of eastern England that had not fallen to the Saxons, and the union of their different bands wtli the conquered native Celts took the form of seven kingdoms, the Anglo-Saxon Hejitarchy, a group of states which rose and fell as one or other of them became more powerful. These were Kent, Essex and Middlesex, Sussex, Wessex, already referred to ; besides Northumbria, including the present Northumberland and all Scotland south of the Forth ; East Anglia (Norfolk, Suflblk, and Cambridge), and Mercia, which embraced the central portions of England. 10. To sum up the leading features of the period of the world's history sketched in the fifth of the little maps : — The Arabian Empire had spread itself out to Central Asia and to Spain, and had already passed the zenith of its greatness. The dynasty of the Ommiades of Damascus had given place to that of the Abassides in the east, though a branch from it had set up an independent Califate at Cordova, in Spain. The Abbaside Harun-al-Rashid, whose praises are sung by eastern poets, had his capital at Bagdad, on the Tigris, a city which had been founded by his predecessor in 762. Charle- magne had consolidated and extended the Frank Empire, received the ambassadors sent from the court of Bagdad to salute him, and had been crowned by the Pope at Rome. Irene, the barbarous mother of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VI., had conceived the bold plan of uniting the east and west of Europe in one great empire, by marrying the Frank Emperor, a scheme which was frustrated by her overthrow and her banishment to the Isle of Lesbos in the JSgean Sea (802). 6. 800-1000 A.D. 1. After the accession of the Abbaside djTiasty in the Arabian Empire, Bagdad, as we have noticed, became the capital of the Califate, and the province of Khorassan, in Persia, began to be considered the nucleus of the empire. Though Islamism continued to spread, the rule of the Califs began to be merely nominal. Already during Harun-al-Rashid's reign, independent kingdoms had been formed in Fez (the city of Fez was founded 808) and HISTOEICAL. 3 1 Tunis, and soon all the western African territories were lost to the Califate. Large numbers of Turks from the region between the Caspian and tlie central mountains of Asia were called in to be emj)loyed in military service. Acquiring power, the Turks rose against their masters, and for a time Turkish kings reigned in Khorassan. Several transitory dynasties succeeded, pre-eminent among which was that of the Ghiznevides, who at the height of their power ruled an empire extending from the Tigris to the Ganges, and from the Jaxartes on the north to the Indian Ocean, the central seat of power being the natural fortress of Ghazni. 2. A Turkish governor of Egypt declared himself independent in 868. A century later the Fatimides, a sect of Mohammedans, whose leader claimed descent from Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet, after overthrowing the rulers of Tunis, conquered Egypt and Syria, and founding C'««ro (970), set up a new Califate there ; so that at this time there were three — one in Bagdad, an- other in Cairo, and a third at Cordova in Spain. Algiers (Al-Jezireh, "the island") had been founded by an Arabian prince twenty-five years previously. 3. In Spain, as we have seen, the inhabitants of the northern mountain country had not been entirely subdued in the Moorish conquest of the rest of the peninsula. Asturias and Galicia formed an independent Christian kingdom, and about the middle of the ninth century the brave and hardy Vascones or Basques of Navarre also regained their independence, and aided in the constant warfare that was maintained against the Moors along the north of the peninsxda. Though the "Spanish March," as the country between the PjT-enees and the Ebro was named, had been retaken from the successors of Charlemagne by the Moors, the Christian mountaineers recovered a large portion of this district. Latterly another Christian kingdom added its strength to Asturias and Navarre ; it was that of Castile, which, from its central position in the peninsula, was destined to play a most prominent part in the future history of Spain. 4. With the death of Charlemagne the great fabric of the Frankish Empire that he had reared crumbled rajiidly into fragments. Repeated divisions and subdivisions of the empire among his successors weakened and distracted it, and brought on internal wars, while foreign assailants threatened it on every side. The Normans, or Northmen, from Denmark and Scandinavia, poured in and infested the country as far as Paris, and permanently held the territory known afterwards as Normandy ; the Spanish March was lost again to the Moors on the south ; on the east the German princes arrogated to themselves the right of electing their own sovereigns ; and shortly after the beginning of the tenth century, Conrad I., a duke or count of Franconia, reigned as king of Germany. The conquests of his successor Otho over the Danes, the Slavs, and Hungarians, extended the boundary of the German Empire north to the Elbe and south into Lombardy, where he was soon after acknowledged suc- cessor of Charlemagne in Italy, and crowned Emperor of the West at Rome. 5. The Hungarians, or Magyars, as they call themselves, with whom the first emperors of Germany had to contend, were a people of Asiatic origin, who, in the year 889, forming a body of fully 40,000 fanalies, left their homes in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea aud made a great exodus to the west- ward, fighting their way to the central basin of the Danube, and the countries which bordered Pannonia on the north-east. Spreading out in all directions, they extended their conquests from the Carpathian mountains down to Servia, and from the Transylvanian Alps to the Aljis of StjTia on the west, founding that realm on the great central plain of the Danube basin whicli has outlived the storms of nearly a thousand years. 6. The history of the Byzantine or Greek Empire, as it was now called, was chiefly characterised by wars with the Arabian powers in the south, to whom 32 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. Crete and Sicily were lost, and by the inroads of the Bulgarians, a people of Finnish origin, who having conquered the Moesians, established tliemselves in the country south of the lower Danube. 7. Towards the close of the tenth century, the Hxssians begin to emerge from obscurity. Among the enemies of the Greek Empire were the eastern Slavs or Slavonians (the ancestral Russians), part of a group of nations living in eastern Europe, about the sources of the Dnieper and Don rivers, known to the ancient ^vriters as the Sarmatians, who had their chief settlements at A^ov- gorod and Kief. Harassed by warlike neighbours, they sent ambassadors, about 862, to the chiefs of the Varangians, or Northmen, beyond the seas, inviting them to their aid. In response came the Scandinavian cliief Rurick, at the head of his armed bands, who, from Novgorod first, and tlien from Kief as capital, extended the embryo emjiire, till it came in hostile contact with the Greek kingdom on the south. 8. Another branch of the Slavonic family also begins to take its place as a political power in Europe about this time. The tribes of the Polani dwelt be- tween the rivers Oder and Vistula, and gradually acquired tlie ascendency over their kindred neighbouring tribes. About the middle of the tenth century their ruler became a convert to Christianity, and under his son Boleslas I., surnamed "the Great," gave unity to the kingdom of Poland, and sustained a successful war with the Germans on the west. Cracow, afterwards the capital, was founded by a Polish prince, Krak, in 700. 9. In Britain, soon after tlie period represented in the last sketch, the independent states of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy were united by Egbert, king of Wessex (827) into the one kingdom of England. To the dynasty thus founded belonged Alfred the Great, whose exertions in repelling the incessant incur- sions of the Danes, his defeat of their army at Edrmgtoyi in Wiltshire, his victories at sea with England's first fleet, and the wise and energetic rule which make his memory dear to all generations of Englishmen, scarcely need be here recalled. 10. During this time Denmark and Scandinavia were knovsn only by the hordes of freebooters who sallied out thence, making raids on England, the Prankish Empire, and Germany, and taking the lead even in Russia. The result of these expeditions was the introduction, towards the close of the tenth century, of Christianity into the Scandinavian countries, and from this time their mythical stories, contained in the heroic "sagas" or "eddas," give place to real history. 11. From the time of Ptolemy onward till this period, geographical know- ledge had rested at nearly the same limits, but now the maritime expedi- tions of these hardy Northmen were destined to give it a far wider range. Already two northern seamen, named Wolfstan and Otliere, had excited interest at King Alfred's court by the story of their voyages through the Baltic to Witland (Prussia) and Estland (Esthonia), and round the North Cape of Europe, in pursuit of the Hval-ros (walrus or whale-horse), to the White Sea. But their discoveries did not end here. The Farije islands (Faar- oen = sheep islands), with their convenient harbours, became one of their strongholds ; about 861 one of these chieftains, driven westward by storms, discovered the mountains of an unknown shore, to whicli he gave the name of Snowland, the island afterwards known as Iceland. Some twelve years later the Norwegians took permanent possession of Iceland, settling about Reykiavik, the present ca])ital of the island. The Icelanders kept up their character of enterprising sailors, and about the close of the ninth century one of them named Gunbiorn came upon an extensive country, to which, from its great cloak of ice reaching down between the black headlands in white glacier arms to the sea, he gave the very apt name of Hvidscerk ( " white shirt " ), a name -I'^v^^"^ 4(^ HISTORICAL. 33 which was unfortunately changed to the inappropriate one of Greenland by- Erik the Red, another Icelander who founded (985) the two colonies of the Ostre and Westre Bygd (east and west bays) on its shores. 12. The great achievement of the Greenland colonists, however, was the discovery of the American continent nearly tive centuries before the time of Columbus. Some of their ships, driven astray by contrary winds, reported an island called Estotiland to the westward, and the country of Drogio, witli cannibal inhabitants. About the year 1000 an expedition under Lief, son of Erik the Red, set sail for the exploration of tliis new country. Tlie regions they discovered were named Helluland (Slateland), supposed to be New- foundland ; Markland, or Woodland, perhaps Nova Scotia ; and Vinland, a country named from the wild vine growing there, the reason which caused the first English settlers to give tlie name Martlia's Vineyard to the same coast-land. 13. Thus, at the period shown in the sixth map, the great Arabian Empire had broken up into a number of separate Mohammedan states, extending from Persia to Spain, and already the central Asiatic Turks had begun to overrule the power of the Califs in the east ; the Greek Empire had lost still more of its reduced territory, and was liarassed on the south by the Saracens, and on the north by the Slavonic peoples of central Europe, now forming themselves into separate kingdoms, such as Russia and Poland. Germany had also risen to an independent place, while Charlemagne's. great Frank Empire had shrunk to a far smaller area, and was overrun by the Northmen. In Spain, the Christian kingdoms of the northern mountaineers held their own, and were extending their power gradually southward against the Moors ; Eng- land was now one kingdom, and the hardy Scandinavian seamen had pushed back the clouds of ignorance over the vast region of the north Atlantic, and had reached the shores of the great western continent. 7. About 1000-1300 a.d. 1. We have now reached the central stage of the period known as the Middle Ages, which separate the ancient or classic times from the modern. Europe, as we have seen, was fast emerging from the state of barbarism, and the nations of modern times were gradually forming and developing themselves. The Christian Church was striving to extend its bounds in northern Europe, and the Papacy had been rising to great temporal power and influence. Super- stition and religious enthusiasm prevailed very extensively, and were manifested in magnificent ecclesiastical buildings and jiilgi-images. This zeal rose to its li eight in Europe when the barbarous Sel.juk Turks overran Palestine and destroyed the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, and brought about the great reli- gious wars between the Christian nations of the west and the Mohammedans of the East, known as the Crusades (1096-1270). Before touching upon the chief events of these wars and their efi"ects on the civilisation of Europe, it will be well to glance at the movements which were taking place in each State of the known world at this time. 2. At tlie end of the last period we left Persia under the rule of the Ghiz- nevides. This dynasty had reigned for little more than half a century before the Seljuk Turks began to migrate into the fertile province of Khorassan. Tliese were an off'shoot of a number of Asiatic tribes who in 744 had over- whelmed the "empire of Kiptchak," as the region north-east of tlie Caspian was called. Their name they took from their leader, who had held the country about Bokhara. After some conflicts with the Ghiznevides they occupied northern Khorassan ; then Balkh and Kharesm (Khiva) fell D 34 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. before them, and advancing southward through Persia they took Karman and Fars. Arrived at Bagdad, the Calif there (whose temporal power was now all but gone, though he was still recognised as the spiritual chief of the Moslems) acknowledged the Turkish leader, and in 1060 the conquest of Persia was complete. Later, Melek Shah, the most powerful of the succeeding Seljuk rulers, added Arabia, Asia Minor, and Armenia, besides Syria, Palestine, and the countries beyond the Oxus, to the Seljuk Empire, which at the height of its greatness stretched from the ^gean Sea to India and Tartary. 3. Egypt at this time was in the hands of the now efl'eminate Fati- mide dynasty, and so remained till the latter part of the twelfth century, wlien the famous Salah-ed-din, or Saladin, son of the Seljuk governor of Tek- rit, on the Tigris, established himself as Sultan of Syria and Egypt. 4. Algeria was governed by Arabian princes up to the middle of the twelfth century ; Marocco had been formed into a separate state shortly after the beginning of the eleventh century, and the city of that name was founded in 1072. Both of these states were, however, destined to fall before the Moham- medan sect named the Almoluides or Unitarians, founded by a native of the Atlas region, to whom Arabs and Berbers flocked. From being a religious body the Almohades became a political power, which mastered all north Africa from Marocco to Tunis, and also extended conquest into Mohammedan Spain as far as the Ebro and Tagus. 5. In the north of the Spanish Peninsula, soon after the foundation of the kingdom of Castile, another Christian state, that of Aragon, was formed in the basin of the Ebro. These now, with Navarre, waged war with the common enemy, the Moors. 6. Portugal, the ancient Lusitania, from the Minho to the Tagus, had fallen under the sway of Castile, and in 1095 Henry of Burgimdy governed it as a dependent fief of that kingdom ; but after a great victory over the Moors at Ourique, in Alemtejo, his son AlfflBiso I. was proclaimed king of Portugal by his soldiers. In 1212 a great and decisive battle was fought by the combined forces of Castile, Navarre, Aragon, and Portugal, against the Moors, on the plains of Tolosa, which eff'ectually broke the Almohade power in Spain. The Mohammedan kingdom of Granada, founded shortly after this, was speedily compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of Castile, and henceforward all danger from the Moslems was at an end. 7. Wlien Hugh Capet ascended the Frankish throne towards the close of the tentli century, and first made Paris the capital, the greater part of the land was held by independent lords, and the authority of the kings extended little beyond Paris and Orleans. Louis VI., surnamed the Good (1108- 1137), re-extended the royal power over the kingdom, and carried on war with England and Germany. In the latter part of the thirteenth century Navarre was added to the Frankish kingdom. 8. We have noticed in a former paragraph that in the ruinous time which followed the breaking up of the empire of Charlemagne, the Northmen had invaded northern France, and had subsequently planted themselves firmly in the country which from them took the name of Normandy. Rolf, or Rollo, the leader of this nortliern expedition, was the ancestor of the Dukes of Nor- mandy, who were to play such an important part in English history. 9. The successors of Alfred the Great on the English throne were in con- stant conflict with the Danes and the Welsh mountaineers, till a more formid- able invasion by the former drove Ethelred the Unready to Normandy, and England passed for twenty-eight years under the rule of the Danish kings Sweyn and Canute. With Edward the Confessor, son of Ethelred, the Saxon power was again restored in England (1042), notable events in his reign being HISTORICAL. 3o the successful wars with the Welsh and Northumbriaus, the advance of an English army into Scotland against Macbeth, and the building of Westminster Abbey. 10. Harold, the sou of the powerful Earl Goodwin of Kent, was raised to the throne on Edward's deatli, but William, Duke of Normandy, to whom Edward had made a promise of the English crown, asserted his right by an invasion of England (1066). Lauding at Pevensey, on the Sussex coast, with 60,000 men, he advanced as far as Hastings. Harold met the invader on the heath, where the village of Battle now stands ; in the fight Harold was slain and William "the Conqueror" became king, transferring the crown of England from the Saxon to the Norman line, though twenty years wero required to complete the conquest, for the Saxons maintained an unequal resistance, retiring to the forests, and as outlaws became the heroes of popular legends like that of Robin Hood. The Normans in turn became absorbed in the stronger Saxon element ; even their language disappeared, leaving only its traces. 11. The Scots and Picts had gradually coalesced into one people under King Kenneth (843), who establisheil his capital at Forteviot, in Strathearn, formerly the centre of the Pictish kingdom. Under Malcolm Canmore, who ruled at the time of the Norman Conquest, and his successors, the country enjoyed comparative quiet ; but towards the end of the thirteenth century the great struggle with England began in which the heroic names of Wallace and Bruce are prominent — a contest which terminated in securing the independence of Scotland on the field of Bunriockhurn. 12. Norway was brought for a short time under the sway of the Danish conqueror Knut, or Canute the Great, but thenceforward continued to be governed by native kings. Sweden first emerges as an indejsendent kingdom in the Ijeginning of the twelfth century, when Gothland was united with it, and soon after we find its Christian kings subjugating and converting the pagan Finns and adding their laud to the kingdom. 13. Germany during this period was troubled by the dissensions of the two great rival parties in the empire, who are best known, in the Italian form of their names, as the Guelphs and Ghibbelines — the one formed of the sup- jiorters of imiDcrial authority, the other opposed to it, and representing the church and municipal rights. These parties took their names from the rival dukes of Franconia and Saxony, whose war-cries were the family names of Waiblingen and Welf, corrupted into the forms above given by the Italians, in whose country their conflicts found their chief scene. 14. Poland at this time was mainly occujiied in wars with the pagan Prus- sians, who, for fear of losing their freedom, resisted every eff'ort at conversion ; and it was not until the Teutonic knights had been invited by Poland to aid in their subjugation that the Christian faitli was established in Prussia. The knights in turn, however, became formidable enemies of Poland, and gained for themselves the countries of Prussia, Livonia, and Courland. 15. Russia had meanwhile fallen from its condition as a united realm, and was held by a number of fjetty princes, whose quarrels kept it in a state of anarchy and weakness. 16. The Greek Empire in the earlier part of this period was harassed on all sides — by the Arabs, the Seljuk Turks, and the northern barbarians ; and in Italy the Normans had reduced Byzantine territory to the possession of Otranto. The twelve sons of a knight of Normandy named Tancred de Haute- ville, whose estates were insufficient to supi)ort such a numerous family, sailed to seek their fortune in the Italian wars. One of them, with a small band of followers, gained possession of Apulia ; another brother, named Roger, con- quered the island of Sicily. The sou of this knight, Roger II., ultimately 36 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. obtained possession of all his uncle's territories on the mainland, and thus was formed the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. 17. We have already referred to the lagoon islands of the Adriatic coast, which gave a refuge to the eastern inhabitants from the devastating wars of tlie north Italian plains, and to the gi'adual rise of the settlement of Venezia or Venice. The first form of government of the island state was republican ; which, by and by, gave way to a magistracy in which a duke or " doge " was invested with undivided authority (697). Keeping up a close alliance with Constan- tinople, the naval importance and commerce of the little state increased year by year. It was after the eleventh century had begun, however, that the com- mercial relations of Venice gradually extended east and west, to the Black Sea, and all the coast of the Mediterranean. The territorial possessions of Venice also increased, and Dalniatia, Istria, and Croatia were first ceded to them. In central Italy the temporal power and possessions of the Pope of Rome had been spreading till they reached thence to Bologna, Ravenna, and Ancona. 18. In 1073 the great Pope Gregory had received a supidication for aid from the Greek Emperor against the Turks, to which he cordially responded, and thus the gi-and idea of a Christian expedition against the Saracens was first entertained. His successor Urban revived the design, and after a council held at Clermont in France in 1095, the expedition was resolved upon. Thou- sands upon thousands, from the remotest corners of Europe, hurried to engage in the holy war, and, each wearing as a badge the sign of the cross, gave the name "crusade" to the movement. First one, then a second great army, led by Peter the Hermit, set out across Hungary and Bulgaria for Constanti- nople ; a third and fourth horde followed, though it was not till later that the real Crusaders, the nobility and yeomanry of Europe, set forth. In this way not fewer than 600,000 men gathered at Constantinople, whence they crossed to Asia Minor, into Mesopotamia and Syria, besieging and taking Antioch; two years afterwards, the remnant of this great army delivered Jerusalem from the hands of the infidel, and Godfrey de Bouillon was elected king of Palestine (1099).. 19. Forty years later, a second crusade, consisting of two vast armies from France and Germany, proved a total failure. Now Saladin, the Seljuk sultan of Egypt, invaded Palestine, and, compelling Jerusalem to capitulate, gave the death-blow to the Christian kingdom. This led to a third crusade, uniting the strength of Germany, France, and England, in which the import- ant city of Acre was besieged and taken (1191), though no further conclusion was reached than that of a treaty granting liberty to the people of the west to make free pilgi-images to the Holy Sepulchi'e. 20. The Crusaders had now changed their object from a religious to a secular one ; the fourth expedition (1202-1204), in which the Franks and the Venetians joined, advancing on Constantinople, took that city, and having mastered the provinces, divided the whole into four parts — Baldwin, Count of Flanders, being made emperor, and the Venetians receiving the coast-lands of the Adriatic and .iEgean. A fifth crusade, led by Frederick of Germany (1228), terminated in the cession of Palestine to that emperor ; a sixth was called forth by the irruption of a new race of Turks into SjTia, but Louis of France (IX.), who led it, was utterly defeated ; he himself was captured, and only obtained his release on paying a heavy ransom to the Sultan of Egj^jt. Still a seventh crusade was begun by Louis (1270), and carried on after his death by Prince Edward of England, but nothing of importance resulted, save that the Templars and other military knights retained, for a few years longer, possession of Acre and some other towns. 21. By bringing the civilisation of the east and west into contact, and remov- ing the prejudices of ignorance, relations of advantage, if not of sympathy, weie HISTORICAL. 3 7 opened up between those different regions ; commerce between east and west received a great impulse, and other great social changes were brought about. 22. While the wars with the Saracens were occupying all minds in Europe, vast changes of dominion were brewing in Asia. Towards the middle of the twelfth century, a Mongol chief named Yesukai Bahadur ruled over some thirty or forty clans who dwelt between the river Amur and the great wall of China, far on the east of Asia. On his death, his son Temujin, only thirteen years of age, assumed his place, but the clans, refusing to acknowledge him, chose another chief, and compelled the rightful heir to retire to Karakorum, and place himself there under the protection of the monarch of Keraeit. In the service of this king, Temujin distinguished himself greatly in conflicts with neighbouring tribes, and obtained the king's daughter in marriage. The king of Karakorum, becoming jealous of his growing influence, ordered Temujin to be assassinated, but he escaped to his own country at the head of a consider- able following. Raising an army there, he marched against his father-in-law, whom he vanquished (1203), seized upon the dominions of Karakorum, and after a short time made himself master of all Mongolia. Assuming now the name of Genghiz Khan (= Klian of Khans), he turned his forces south towards China, conquered the northern Chinese region of Khatai, scaled the great wall, and after a long series of campaigns capj;ured Pekin in 1215. The victorious Mongols now pressed westward into Turkistan, the vast region stretching between Lake Lob and the Sea of Aral, and reached the Jihoon on the borders of Kharesm or Khiva. Seven hundred thousand of his cavalry burst into Khiva in 1219 ; Samarkatid, Boklmra, and all the chief cities of the land, were taken ; next his hordes overran Persia, driving out the last of the Seljuk kings ; they crossed the Caucasus into Russia and routed the ^Russians in a great battle near the Sea of Azov ; after destroying Ria~an, Moscow, and tlie other settlements, they carried victory into Poland and Hungary. Nor were these Mongols less successful in the east, for the whole of southern Asia, and India as far as the Satlej, was laid waste before them. 23. The sons and grandsons of Genghiz Khan still further extended the huge empire. One of the latter, named Kulilai Khan, availing himself of an invita- tion from a king of the Song dynasty in China to aid him against the Manchu Tatars, entered China (1260) with a great army and drove out the Manchus ; Ijut afterwards overthrew the Song dynasty and conquered all southern China, extending his donunion as far as the Strait of Malacca. The court of Kublai Khan, the magnificence of which is described by Marco Polo, was attended by learned men from India, Persia, and even from Europe ; and his rule was a most beneficent one. During it the noble work of the Grand Canal of China was completed, connecting Tientsin, the port of Pekin, with Hang- cJmu on the lower course of the great river Yangtze, a distance as great as from Land's End to the Shetland Isles. Until lately, a grain fleet, with its 400,000 tons of rice for the supply of the capital, passed every year from the south by this route, avoiding the storms and pirates of the coast. 24. Thus before the middle of the thirteenth century the vast Mongol Empire had stretched out from China to Poland and Hungary, over all Asia except India and Asia Minor — an empire which far surpassed in extent any that had yet been known on the surface of the globe ; and yet one which was so thoroughly organised under strict laws, that it was said one might travel from end to end of it without danger. 25. Among the great changes of power brought about by the Mongol invasion was that of the removal of the Ogiizian Turks, who retreated before it from the steppes east of the Caspian to the mountains of Armenia. Othman or Osman, a chief of the tribe, on the destruction of the Seljuk power, obtained possession of Bithynia, and grew so strong as to be able to attack the Asiatic p o '" n 38 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. portion of the sinking Byzantine empire vnth. success, founding there (1299) the subsequently great empire of the Ottoman or Osmauli Turks, as they are named from hini. 26. In the course of his conquest Genghiz Khan had carried off multitudes of western Asiatics as slaves. Twelve thousand of these, most of them Turks, were bought from him by the Sultan of Egypt (a successor of Saladin), who formed them into a body of troops. From being servants these well-armed slaves rose to be masters in Egypt, and placed one of their own number in the sultanate (1254), thus foundiug the Mameluke (or slave) dynasty in Egyjit, which lasted for nearly three centuries, bringing the country again into great prosperity and power. 27. Thus about the year 1300, at the period represented in the seventh little chart, the relic of tlie once great Arabian Empire had been restricted to its original seat, and to the western region of North Africa, all else having fallen into the hands of the Turks. The Calif of Bagdad had taken refuge under the protection of the Mamelukes of Egyjst, retaining his spiritual power only ; the Ommiade califate in Spain had long fallen ; the Moham- medan princes now held the kingdom of Granada only, as vassals to the Christian court of Castile ; Navarre, on the north, had become an appanage of the crown of France, and Normandy and Poitou had been annexed to it. The English under Edward 1. had incorporated Wales after ten years' contest, and Scotland was fighting for independence, led by Wallace and Bruce ; Anglo-Norman adventurers (Fitzgeralds, Butlers, and Burkes) had established themselves among the native, clans of Ireland. Denmark, Sweden, and Norway were separate states, and the Norse colonies across the Atlantic had reached the most flourishing period of their commerce, the old literature of histori- cal sagas or tales and poems being zealously cultivated. In central Europe, Poland and Hungary had been brought to the verge of ruin by the Mongol invasions, which had swept away for the time the divided principalities of Russia. In the south, the old Greek Empire was fast sinking, and assaults on it by the Turks had begun. 28. During the earlier part of the period that we have been considering there lived and travelled a man who may be called the great geographer of the middle ages, as Ptolemy was of ancient times. This was the Arabian Edrisi, a man of noble birth, liorn at Ceuta, in north Africa, in 1099. He studied at Cordova, then the great centre of commerce and the seat of learning of the western califate, and afterwards he travelled to Constantinople and Asia Minor, Egypt and Marocco, through Spain, and to the coasts of France and England, finally settling with King Roger of Sicily, there to put into .shape the materials which this enlightened ruler had been gathering for fifteen years from travellers to all parts of the known world — itineraries, measure- ments, and observations of all kinds. Here Edrisi drew on a great globe of silver, and described in a book, all that was then kno^vn of the earth, from the "Sea of Darkness" west of the Spanish peninsula to the "Sea of Pitchy Darkness," which was believed to lie east of Asia. He divided the known world, like Ptolemy, into seven belts of climate, from the hottest in the south to the coldest in the far north. 29. Later, as we have seen, the crusades brought the western and eastern nations into close contact, and could not fail to extend the geographical knowledge of both sides of the civilised world. Then the terrible march of the Mongols over Asia and eastern Europe drew all eyes in that direction, and ambassadors and conciliatory embassies were sent from all the western powers to the court of the great Khan. John de Piano Carpini, a Franciscan monk of Naples, was the Pope's envoy to the new potentate, and brought back from the Mongol court a striking narrative of his adventures in the HISTORICAL. 3 9 rigorous climate of central Asia, describing also the great plains east of the Caspian strewn with the bones and skulls of the victims of the devastating warfare that had just passed over them, and giving for tlie first time to Europeans a true account of the Tatars and their manner of living. William de Rubruquis, also a Minorite friar, was sent into Asia by Louis of France (1253-54), and he too reached the court of the Khan at Karakorum after crossing the great deserts, which he compared to an ocean for extent. 30. Among those who were at this time attracted towards the newly-known lands of Asia were two merchants of far-reaching Venice, Nicolo and Matteo Polo, who carried their trading venture past the Euxine and the Volga, round the Caspian to Bokhara, where, meeting with some ambassadors going south- wards to the court of Kublai Khan, they accompanied them to Keinenfu, the summer residence of the ruler. They were well received, and returned to Europe as envoys to the Pope, bearing a request for 100 Europeans well versed in arts and sciences to instruct the Mongols. Finding it impossible to fulfil their mission, they returned in 1271, taking with them Marco, the son of Nicolo Polo, who commended himself to the Khan by his sliill and learning, and was made his envoy to several of the other Asiatic rulers, to China, Assam, Tibet, Bengal, and Pegu. In this service Marco Polo gained the material for his book, which is the cliief source of information regarding the state of Asia at the close of the thirteenth century. Having thus passed seventeen years in travelling through kingdoms whicli no European had ever before seen, from the high table-lands of central Asia to the great rivers and teeming population of the lowlands of China, he obtained permission to join the escort of a Mongol princess travelling to the west of Persia. He accordingly set out from China (1291), and was the lirst European to sail on the China sea, and to pass through what we now know as the Strait of Malacca to the Indian Ocean, lie came to Teheran in Persia ; hearing, on arrival there, that Kublai Khan was dead, he returned to Venice (1295), bringing much wealth and many strange objects from the unknown regions he had visited. To Marco Polo is due not only the opening up to accurate knowledge of the vast region of the central Asiatic continent, but also the disclosure of the chief of the great islands which lie beyond it. Before his journey the existence of Jajian, which he called Zipangu, had not even been suspected, any more than that of the archipelago to the south-east of Asia. His book, as might be expected, created au immense interest in the learned world of the west, and was of inestimable value in stimulating geographical research, as we shall afterwards see. 31. But whilst Venice opened up new paths to commerce towards the east, Genoa, which found herself excluded from these profitable pastures through the jealousy of her countrymen, looked westward, and sought to open up a new road to India by sailing tlirough the Strait of Gibraltar and round the southern extremity of Africa. It was Genoese who first, in modern times, ventured upon the Atlantic ; it was they who discovered the Canaries, Ma- deira, and the Azores, and who first felt their way along the west coast of Africa. Tedisio Doria and the brothers Vivaldi, who left Genoa in three small vessels, in 1291, had no other object than the discovery of an ocean highway to India, and we have good reason to believe that at least one of their vessels sailed to the Senegal, if not beyond it. 8. 1300-1500. 1. The death of the emperor Kublai Khan was the signal for gr-eat changes of empire in Asia. In China the power of the Tatar ruler, who had grown effeminate under the unaccustomed luxuries of a more civilised state, was overthrown by a revolt of the Chinese, and the Ming or bright dJ^lasty arose. 40 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. China was again united under its own sovereign at the court of Nanking, and Chinese supremacy was recognised in the surrounding countries of Corea, Manchuria, and Mongolia on the north, and perhaps also by the Grand Lama of Tibet. 2. A second great conqueror -hero now appeared in western Asia. This was Timur or Timur-leng, from his lameness (vulg. Tamerlane), a descendant of the family of Genghiz Khan, and a chief of the division of his gi-eat empire, known as Jagatai, or Turkistan nortli of the Amu river, who had reunited some of its independent sections under his sway. Ambitious of restoring this kingdom to its former power and extent, he first reduced the rebellious prince of Herat, and afterwards invading Seistan and Mazanderan, in Persia, subdued all the districts east of the Euphrates from Tijtis to Shiraz. 3. While engaged in this southern campaign his unprotected northern territories were invaded by the Khan of Kiptchak. Hastening home, Timur speedily drove out the invaders, and pursued them westward, almost anni- hilating the Kiptchak army in a great battle on the Bielaya (a tributary of the Kama) in 1391. Still advancing westward, he now passed through the gates of Derbend, and tlience northward by the Volga as far as Moscow, leaving death and desolation in his track. A few years later he turned his con- quering army towards India, and going by the pass of Kabul descended into the plains, fought a great battle before Delhi and took that city, advancing afterwards beyond it to the Ganges. Returning with immense spoils, he ex- pended these in adorning his cajntal of Sainarkand. 4. A year later Timur made a new ex^jedition to the south-west, attack- ing and overthrowing the Egyptian Empire in Syria, capturing the towns of A leppo, Baalbek, and Damascus. He next attacked the Turkish possessions in Asia Minor, and completely routed the Sultan Bayazet near Angora, and captured his person. On his return homeward Timur conquered Georgia, and by way of Merv and Balkh again reached Samarkand. A great invasion of China was next projected by the conqueror, and had actively begun, when he died of a fever caught on the banks of the Jihun (1405). 5. While Timur was beginning his conquests in Asia, the Ottoman Turks had gained a footing in Europe by taking Gallipoli, and the Greek Emjiire was reduced to the districts round Constantinople. Tlie power of Servia was annihilated on the bloody field of Kosovo-polye ("plain of blackbirds"), to the west of Prishtina (1389), and the decisive victory over the Hungarians, won seven years later at Nicopoli, opened Central Europe to the inroads of the Turks. The great defeat of the Sultan by Timur in Asia gave Constan- tinople a resjiite for fifty years. Recovering from this defeat, the Turks now mastered Macedonia and Greece. Constantinople was stormed in 1453, and with it fell the last relic of the empire of the Romans. Before the close of the fifteenth century the Turkish Empire in Europe had been extended over all the Balkan Peninsula, and included, besides this, the northern shores of the Black Sea, with Dalmatia, and Otranto in Italy. 6. During this period Hungary recovered from the wounds inflicted by the Mongol invaders, and became a firmly established State : at the head of it was Matthias Corvinus, the greatest of Hungarian kings, who raised the cavalry force knovni as the Hussars (Hussar meaning the "price of twenty," since one man was enrolled out of every twenty), and with their aid the indeiiendeuce of Hungary was maintained against the advancing Turks. 7. Towards the middle of the fourteenth century, when the fierce energy of the Mongols was declining, the principalities of Russia began to shake oflF the yoke to which they had been subjected, and to strive among themselves for the supremacy ; the princes of Moscow and Tver were the strongest, the former ultimately becoming the chief. The first great step towards liberation was HISTORICAL. 41 gained in a victory over the Mongol Khan on the banks of the Don (1380), before Timiir's invasion. It is, however, to Ivan III. (1462-1505), siirnamed the Great, that the Russian Empire owes its true foundation ; under his skilful guidance the petty principalities were united into one, and their strength turned against the Mongol khanates of the south and west (Kazan, Astrakhan, Krini Tartary, and dismembered Kiptchak), and against the Lithuanians of the north-west. He married Zoe, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, and thus paved the way for the introduction of European civilisation. He also introduced the two-headed Byzantine eagle as the Russian arms, au emblem in connection with which certain pretensions are still remembered. 8. In the earlier part of this period Poland was engaged in repelling the attack of the Teutonic knights, who had been engaged in a crusade for enforcing Christianity on the people of the southern shores of the Baltic, and had thereby acquired possession of Prussia, Livonia, and Courland, but who were finally overthrown. Subsequently the Polish crown passed to Jagello, a grand-duke of Lithuania, the founder of the illustrious dynasty of the Jagellons, and for tlie first time Lithuania was united to Poland. 9. In Germany the house of Hapsburg had been rising into power, and afterwards held the throne of the German Empire almost uninterruptedly. The period is marked chiefly by the intrigues of the popes, the Roman Church having gi-adually merged its spiritual aspect into a widespread machinery of external government. This spiritual decay was naturally followed by those corruptions and abuses which began to be denounced by such men as the Bohemian reformer and martyr John Huss, whose followers subsequently took such terrible revenge in Mie insurrections kno\vn as the Hussite wars. 10. Tliis time is also memorable as that of the contest for independence carried on by the Swiss mountaineers against the Austrian power, and the formation of the Confederation of the Cantons, which successfully established its independence in many battles, from that of Morgarten (1315) to that of Morat (1476). 11. In France a great part of the fourteenth century was disturbed by the constant wars with Edward III. of England, who laid claim to the French throne in right of his mother ; in this was fought the battle of Crecy (1346), wliere the Black Prince gained his crest, and that of Poictiers (1356), in which King Jean was taken prisoner — victories which exit down the flower of the French nobility. After a pause during the minority of Richard II. the war was renewed ; Henry V. won the great victory of Agincourt (1415) ; but fourteen years later, when the English had advanced to Orleans, a reaction came ; Joan of Arc inspired courage into the hearts of the besieged, and became the dread of the previously triumphant English. Not many years later the English lost all their acquisitions with the exception of the town of Calais, for the disastrous civil contests, known as the Wars of the Roses, had broken out in England and divided its strength. 12. In the northern countries, after many feuds and changes of territory, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway were first united as one by the treaty of Calmar (1397), imder Margaret of Denmark. Iceland passed with Norway under the new sovereign ; but all communication with the Greenland colonies appears to have ceased soon after this date, and they seem to have been completely for- gotten for more than three centuries ; the fearful pestilence which had ravaged northern Europe reached them about the beginning of the fifteenth century, sweeping ofl' the greater part of the coloniste, and leaving the rest a prey to the attacks of the Eskimos, or Skrellings as tliey were named by the Nor- wegians. The very site of the colonies was lost till quite recently. 13. We come now to the Spanish Peninsula, where great events were in progress, and where that spirit of adventure and discovery was being fostered 42 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. which was to add a new hemisphere to the known world. Wlien we last glanced at the changes of power in Spain, the Mohammedan Moors had been restricted to the vassal kingdom of Granada, in the south of the Peninsula, whence they were carrying on a chivalrous warfare with the kings of Castile. The kingdom of Aragon was rapidly spreading outward ; the Balearic Isles, Sicily, and Sardinia, were added to it before the beginning of the fourteenth century, and soon afterwards all Naples and southern Italy were brought under its dominion. With the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon wth Isabella queen of Castile (1469) began the consolidation of Spain into one great empire. Granada was conquered, and all those of the Moors who refused to adopt Christianity were expelled from the Peninsula (1492). Twenty years later the kingdom of Navarre, in the north, was seized upon by Ferdinand, so that about the close of the fifteenth century Spain was one united kingdom from the Pyrenees to Gibraltar. 14. Portugal meanwhile had maintained its independence, and was steadily rising to the highest place as the greatest maritime power in Europe. Already in 1415 the Portuguese, taking the aggressive against the Moors, captured from them the town of Ceuta, on the African coast, and established themselves there. Prince Henry, son of King John I., distinguished himself greatly in this conquest, and on his return took up his residence at Sagres, close to Cape St. Vincent. His mariners, in their sea-fights with the Moors, had sailed into parts of the ocean long believed to be inaccessible, and Prince Henry's ambi- tion for discovery had been awakened. Forming an observatory at Sagres, he gathered there the sons of the nobility of Portugal, and had them trained in the sciences necessary for navigation. Rumours of the gold-yielding coasts of Guinea had been gathered from the Moors, and the thoughts of adventurers were turned thither. ^ 15. The voyagers sent out southward doubled Cape Bojador, on the African coast, in 1433; and in 1441 Cape Blanco was reached. In the fol- lowing year Nuno Tristao sighted Cape Verd, whose luxuriant vegetation for ever silenced those who looked upon the equatorial regions as an uninhabit- able waste scorched up by the heat of the sun. In 1455 the Venetian Ca da Mosto, on his return from a visit to the Senegal and Gambia, discovered the Cape Verd islands, which were immediately taken possession of by the Portu- guese. The last exi^edition which sailed under the auspices of Prince Henry was commanded by Pedro de Cintra, 1462, who discovered Sierra Leone. Thus before Prince Henry's death the coast was known as far as Sierra Leone, and the work he had set on foot was eagerly taken up by others. The coast, which was named from the grain of the Meleguetta pepper, was next explored, and Fernando Po reached the island which now bears his name, though he called it Ilha Formosa, the beautiful isle. Each new voyager surpassed his predecessor. Joiio de Santaram and Pedro d'Escobar were the first to cross the equator, in 1471. Diego Cam, in 1484, found the mouth of the huge river we now know as the Congo, and there set up the pillar to mark his discovery, from which the river itself for a long time was known as the Rio do Padrao ; sailing still farther south, he exjilored the coast nearly to the southern tropic. Followng him two years later came Bartholomew Diaz, who passed on beyond this limit to the cape named Das Voltas, near the Orange River ; whence driven out to sea by storms, he regained the coast at Algoa Bay, and planted a cross on the islet there, still known as St. Croi.x. He had thus rounded the south-western promontory of Africa, and from the violent weather he had experienced it was named Cabo Tormentoso (the Cape of Storms), a name afterwards changed by King John of Portugal to the more ausf)icious one of Gaho de bona Esperanza,, the Cape of Good Hope. 16. One of the vague legends of mediceval times was that of a rich and HISTOEICAL. 43 magnificent kingdom the sovereign and priest of which came to be known in the west as " Prester John ; " but the locality of this kingdom was undefined, and it was sometimes supposed to be in Asia, sometimes in Africa. The reports concerning it had, however, made a profound impression in Europe, and led the adventurous Portuguese to search for it in Africa. In this quest Ahyssinia was visited by Pedro de Covilham, an emissary of King John of Portugal, a few years after the southern cape of Africa was discovered, and thus close relations were begun with this part of Africa which lasted for several centuries. But, before entering Abyssinia, the Portuguese emissary had visited Ormuz, Goa, and Malabar, and, crossing tlie Indian Ocean, he had landed on the Sofala coast, rich in mines of gold and silver, and identified by some as the land of Ophir to which Solomon sent his ships. It was then Europeans first heard of the powerful kingdom of Monoinotajju, to the south of the Zambesi. 17. Lisbon at this time had become the centre of all that was speculative and adventurous in maritime discovery. Here there lived an Italian of Genoa, named Colon (Columbus), who while employed in the construction of charts and maps, conceived the idea of sailing westward to the Indies of Marco Polo. Toscanelli, the great Florentine astronomer, had sanctioned such a project in a letter written in 1474 ; and Columbus was confirmed in his views by the discovery, on the Azores, of pieces of carved wood, and even of a boat containing the bodies of men whose features differed from those of Africans or Europeans, and who had evidently been drifted ashore from some distant countsy in the west. He ultimately found the means of laying his scheme before King John. The Portuguese sovereign having decided against the venture, Columbus, disappointed but not despairing, turned to Spain, and after eight years of hoping and waiting at length was put in command of three small vessels, only one of which was decked. With these he set sail from the bar of Saltes, near Palos on the Rio Tiuto, in August 1492. After a month spent in refitting at the Canaries he ventured out into the unknown seas, and, disregarding the fears and disaffection of his crew, bore steadily westward. On the 11th of October, says Columbus in his diary, "the sailors of the caravel Pinta saw a reed and a stick ; and they picked wp another small bit of carved wood, and also a piece of cane, some other fragments of land vegeta- tion, and a small board. At these indications they drew in their breath and were all full of gladness. At ten o'clock at night the admiral, while standing on the quarter deck, saw a light, although it was so indistinct that he could not say with certainty that it was land ; but he called to Pero Gutierrez, the king's groom of the chambers, and told him there was land in sight, and desired him to look out, and so he did, and saw it." At two o'clock after midnight, the land appeared at two leagues' distance. They struck all sail and lay to until Friday the 12th of October, when they went on shore in an armed barge and took possession in the name of the king and queen of Spain ; the island was called Guanalumi in the Indian language, but Columbus gave it the name San Salvador. This islet is identified with Watling Island in the Lucayo or Baliama gi'oup. Continuing westward, Columbus discovered Cuba and Hayti or San Domingo, and on the latter, which he called Hispaniola, he left a small colony and set sail again for Spain, where he was now received with joy and admiration. 18. In the belief tliat the western side of Asia had been reached, the new lands were collectively named the West Indies. In September of next year Columbus set sail again for the west from Cadiz with seventeen ships and a strong force, and on this voyage added the Caribee IsloAids and Javiaica to his dis- coveries. In a third voyage, in 1498, he steered more to the south, and found tlie island of Trinidad, and the mouth of the Orinoco river, lauding in the Gulf of Paria. 44 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. The success of Columbus had naturally inflamed many with the passion for discovery ; among those who first set out on the path he had opened up to the west, was Amerigo Vespucci, a naval astronomer of Florence, who sailed with Admiral Ojeda from Cadiz in 1499, and with him explored the coast from Trinidad westward, discovering the lake of Maracaybo ; they gave the name Venezuela (little Venice) to a village built on piles at the entrance to the lake which reminded them of Venice, a name which afterwards spread to the whole country. It was Amerigo who first proclaimed the fact that the newly-discovered countries had no connection with Asia, but formed a " New World," which geographers, soon after the publication of his narra- tive, named " America. " Next year, Piuzon, a companion of Columbus, sailed south, discovering the mouth of the Amazon, and doubling the promontory called Cape San Roque. 19. Meanwhile the Portuguese had been vigorously following up their African expeditions, and had made a discovery only second to that of the new continent in the west. On the return of Bartholomew Diaz from the Cape of Storms, King John chose Vasco da Gama, an intrepid mariner of high birth, to search for a southern passage to India. With foTir vessels, and provided with letters to all potentates that might be met with, among others to the mythical " Prester John," the little fleet left Lisbon in July 1497, and reached the inlet we now know as Taljle Bay, near the Cape of Good Hope, in November of that year. A mutiny of his crew had to be suppressed before he could sail round the south of Africa. On Christmas day the land which was .thence named " Natal " was seen, and presently the known coasts of Mozambique came in view. Reaching the Arab port of Melinde, north of Zanzibar, an Indian pilot was taken on board, under whose guidance the Indian Ocean was safely crossed to the port of Calicut in India. The Arab merchants here, fearing interference vnth their commerce, incited the Hindus against the Portuguese, and Gama had to fight his way out of the port. 20. Soon after he had again cast anchor in the Tagus the Portuguese king resolved to follow up the discovery of the new route by sending out a strong force to establish settlements in India ; and afleet of thirteen vessels under Pedro Cabral set sail in march 1500. To avoid the calms of the equatorial latitudes in the Atlantic, Cabral took a course too far to the west, and falling into the southerly current was borne to the shores of South America near the harbour now known as Porto Seguro. Landing here, he took possession of the new land in the name of the king of Portugal, and sent back two of his vessels to announce his discovery of the " Terra da Santa Cruz,'''' the country now called Brazil. Afterwards passing round the Cape to Mozambique and India, and making the force of the Portuguese arms felt at Calicut, he was permitted to found a factory there, after concluding a treaty with the native ruler. 21. The ardour of the English also had been roused by Columbus' great discovery, and Henry VII. gave to Giovanni Cabot, a Venetian sailor resident in Bristol, the command of a squadron of five vessels for a voyage of discovery across the Atlantic. Caliot the elder was accompanied in this voyage by his sons Ludovico and Sebastian (born at Bristol), and in June 1497 they sighted the coast of America, at the Helluland of the old Norwegian voyagers, giving the re-discovered country the name of Newfoundland. Three years later these shores were visited by the Portuguese navigator Cortereal, who found the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and the wild and precipitous shores to the north of it, on which he bestowed the name Terra Labarador = "cultivable land," a name quite as inapt as that of Greenland. 22. The immediate result of tlie discoveries of Marco Polo was the establish- ment of more intimate relations with eastern Asia. The Mongol sovereigns of China encouraged Christian missionaries, foremost amongst whom were Juan HISTORICAL. 45 de Montecorv'ino, Friar Odorico of Pordenone, and Marignola. Italian mer- chants, including Pegoletti of Florence and Nicolo Conti, the lirst European to cross theDekkan (1424), ])euetrated to India and into Turkestan ; and Clavijo, the ambassador of King Henry of Castile, partook of the rude hospitality of Timur Leng at Samarkand. Nor must we omit here Sir John Mandeville's wonderful account of travels, which enjoyed a popularity quite unprecedented. 23. To recaijitulate the chief features and conditions of the known world, at the time represented in the eiglith little chart : — In the far east China had recovered its independence under the Ming dynasty, and its supremacy was acknowledged over Mongolia and eastern Turkistan, though the states of Tonquin and Cochin China, in the southern peninsula beyond India, had assumed a political independence. Western Asia, as we have seen, had been reconquered by Timur of the country of Jagatai, or western Turkistan, whose successors maintained his empire till near the end of the fifteenth century, when it was again subdivided, all eastern Persia falling to the Usbegs of Kiptchak, who had raised the Khanate of Khiva to power ; while a new dynasty, formed by the union of a number of tribes, had sprung up in western Persia, making Azerldjan its chief seat. The Ottoman Turks Imd extended their European territory to its widest limit over the ruins of the Greek Empire, and their farther advance had been sternly checked by the Hussars of Hungary. Eussia had become a united kingdom under Ivan the Great, and had acquired from its union the power to throw off the Tatar yoke. 24. In western Europe, the Swiss mountaineers had secured their inde- pendence. France was recovering from the calamities inflicted on it by the English, who had all but lost their hold on the land. In the south the reaction of Christendom against Mohammedanism had begun. The Christian kingdoms of Spain and Portugal had driven back the Moors across the Straits into Africa, and had consolidated their strength over the whole Peninsula. The Moors in turn had settled themselves along the north African coast, and had begun that course of piracy which was first instituted as a retaliation against the Christian persecution, but wliich afterwards sank to a barbarous profession. 25. Marocco at this time had been formed into a monarchy, and enjoyed great prosperity. In the south it touched upon a great empire which had risen in Negrolaml. This was the kingdom of So7ighay, the rulers of which had embraced Mohammedanism in the eleventh century, and which, under Haj Mohammed A'Skia, who came into power in the end of the fifteenth century, extended its dominion across the whole region about the great bend of the Niger, to the confines of Marocco on the north, and on the west almost to the shores of the Atlantic. More towards the centre of the continent, round the basin we now know as that of Lake Chad, another great Mohanmiedan empire, that of Bornii, had also arisen, and reached its height of greatness about the close of the fifteenth century. 26. Portugal and Spain, as we have seen, had given birth to the boldest navigators the world had ever known ; the terrors of the unknown "Sea of Dark- ness " in the west had been overcome. The wealth of a new hemisphere had been laid open to adventure and conquest. Africa had been circumnavigated, and the way to the wealth of India had been found. Spain had already laiassacje, round Norway and along the coast of Siberia, or the nortli-west passage, between Greenland and the north coast of America. 32. The search for a north-east passage was begun by England in 1553, when Sir Hugh Willoughby set out with three vessels ; passing round the North Cape he entered the White Sea, and sighted the land now called by the Russians Xovaya Zemlya (New Land) ; but the voyage was disastrous, and two of the vessels were lost after drifting about with the ice over the waste of water, and with them perished the leader of the first Arctic expedition. The attempt was twice renewed by the English before the end of the cen- HISTORICAL. 55 tury, in expeditions under Burroughes and Pet, and Jackmau, but without success. \Vlien the attempts to force a passage north-eastward had failed, efforts were directed to the north-west, and Martin Frobisher sailed from Deptford in March 1576 with two little vessels of 25 tons each, Queen Elizabeth, who was then at Greenwich, bidding them God speed as they passed down the river. In July they sighted Greenland, and soon after the barren lands on the American coast to which the name " Meta Incognita " was given, and they discovered the bay to the north of Hudson Bay, which is named after Fro- bisher. Ten years later. Captain John Davis was more successful in sailing north through the strait which bears his name, and in reaching as high a latitude as 72° off the west Greenland coast. 33. While other maritime nations were forbidden a lawful share in the good fortune of the Spaniards, who arrogantly assumed a divine right to the New World and practised great cruelties uf)ou all foreign interlopers, enterprising mariners of England and France began to make reprisals in the " Sj)anish Main," to cut out their trading vessels, and especially to intercept and capture the heavy galleons which every year brought to the Peninsula the gold, silver, and other wealth contributed by the American colonies to the mother country. Sir John Hawkins, the first Englishman it is said who traflicked in slaves, was afterwards more honourably employed, and became noted for his exploits in the Spanish Main. In one of his last adventures he was joined by Francis Drake, who subsequently made several freebooting voyages to the West Indies. In 1570 Drake obtained a commission from Queen Elizabeth, and sailing again for America plundered the town of Nombre de Dios, on the Isthmus of Panama. Crossing the mountains, he saw the Pacific, and " prayed God to grant him leave to sail an English shiji on this sea." Retiring with much spoil to England, he set out again in 1577, and following on the track of Magellan reached the Pacific, sacked and plundered all the Spanish coast towns from Chile up to Peru, capturing also a great plate galleon. He then steered still northward, hoping to find a northern passage back to the Atlantic, and took formal possession of the land between 43° N. and 38° 30' N. in the name of Queen Elizabeth. Thence he sailed across the Pacific to the Moluccas, to Ternate, and Java, and straight across the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope, reaching Plymouth again in 1579, completing thus the second circumnavigation of the globe. 34. Within a few months of Drake's return. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, accompanied by the famous Sir Walter Raleigh, set out on an ill-fated expedition to Newfoundland, with the' object of forming a colony in North America. The island was formally taken possession of in the name of Queen Elizabeth ; biit the return voyage was disastrous, and the leader of the expedition was lost. Raleigh's spirit of enterprise, however, led him again to America, this time to discover and take possession of the country which he named Virginia, in allusion to his virgin Queen Elizabeth, planting here the first little germ of Anglo-Saxon America. 35. It was to men trained in these schools of maritime adventure under Drake and Hawkins, Frobisher and Raleigh, bold and dexterous in the management of their little vessels, that England owed her safety when Philip of Spain, burn- ing to revenge his losses on the Spanish Main, and the aid given by England to the Protestants of the Netherlands in their war of independence, sent his huge Arnuida cff 130 great war vessels into the English Channel. It was there defeated and chased away north to the Orkneys, and round the Western Isles of Scotland, to be wrecked all along those stormy shores. 36. Meanwhile in Holland William of Orange was fighting for his country's freedom against the Spanish troops, relieving Leyclen by breaking through 56 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. tlie sea dykes, flooding the country, and d^o^vning many of the besieging Spaniards ; wliile his coadjutors, the " Beggars of the Sea," made heavy depredations on Spanish commerce, and took tlie ports of Bnll and Flushing. Henceforth the Dutch also l>egan to take a place in maritime adventure and discovery on the high seas. They were the first Europeans to settle and organise trading stations in the country called " Guaya^m" (or Guiana), on the coast of South America (1580). The Dutch also took up the quest of the supposed north-east passage to the Indies, and William Barentz, one of tlie best seamen of his age, sailed three times to the north, reaching the high latitude of 80° in his last voyage in 1596 ; he discovered Bear Island, and the sharp black peaks of the glacial land named Spitzbergen ; douljliug also the northern cape of Novaya Zemlya he wintered on its eastern coast, and was the first European to live out a dark season in the Arctic region. 37. Spanish seamen also continued to add to their discoveries in the Pacific. In 1567 Alvaro Mendana found the islands which he called the Salomons, to suggest the idea that Solomon had gone thither for the gold which adornei his temj")le, and thus to draw attention to the discovery. Thirty years later the group which was called Sta. Cruz was discovered, and in the next year, the archipelago far out in the centre of the Pacific, to which Men- daiia attached the name of the reigning viceroy of Peru, calling them the Marq%iesas de Mendoza. Farther east in the Pacific Juan Fermindez found the islet on which the English mariner Selkirk (Robinson Crusoe) afterwards was exiled ; but on the east coast of North America they never got farther north than 43° 10' during the 16th century, for Juan de Fuca, who claimed to have discovered the strait now named after him, has been proved an impostor. 38. Failing in their efforts to find an independent track to the Indies, the other maritime nations of Europe, now that the pride of Spain had been humbled, began towards the end of the century to frequent the southern trade routes hitherto sacred to the Portuguese and Spaniards. We have noticed that the Dutch had already secured a footing in South America in Guayana. The British also had laid the foundation of a colony in Virginia on the northern half of the continent, and were soon to gain a hold on the West Indies by settling in the fertile islet of Bariadoes. Away in the East Indies also, British and Dutch ships began to appear, and to compete there with the Portuguese. The Dutch under Houtman reached Achin, in the north of Sumatra, in 1599, and two years later brought home to Holland the first cargo of goods from that region, with two native ambassadors. It was on the 31st December 1600 that Queen Elizabeth granted a charter to a number of merchants of London trading to the East Indies, which gave them the exclusive right of trading in the Indian Ocean and Pacific ; and from this East India Company our great Indian Empire was to rise. 39. To sum up in a few words the state of the kno\vn world at the end of the sixteenth century : — In Asia the Chinese Empire remained unshaken ; Persia had again become an independent empire ; the Mohammedan Moguls had begiin to reign in northern India ; the once great Tatar emj^ire had been reduced to the states east of the Caspian. In the north, Russia was spreading eastward over Asia, and had come in contact with the Ottoman Empire, now exijanding to its greatest extent in the south, and vnth Sweden in the north- west. The great Reformation had passed over Europe, separating its Catholic states of the south from the Protestants of the north, and giving rise to fierce wars and many political changes. Maritime discovery and adventure and commerce were being eagerly extended by tlie nations of western Europe. Four times the world had heen circumnavigated — by the Portuguese Magellan, by the English Drake and Cavendish, and lastly by the Dutchman Van Noort. HISTOKICAL. 57 Spain had extendefl her conquests to Mexico, Peru, and Chile, which were now ruled by Spanish viceroys. The Portuguese had established themselves firmly on the African shores at Senegambia, Guinea, and Angola, on the west, and at Mozambique and Sofala on the east ; their possessions and settlements in the East Indies included the Malabar coast of India, Cejdon, and Malacca ; and their traffic reached to all the islands of the Asiatic archipelago, to China and Japan, touching on these seas the discoveries and claims of Spain. The English and Dutch, after vainly seeking an independent highway to the north-east or north-west through the ice-fields of the Arctic region, had become formidable rivals of the Spaniards and Portuguese in their own lines, both in the West Indies and round the Cape of Good Hope to the eastward. In the Indian Ocean the Dutch (1598) even took one of the Mascarenhas isles from the Portuguese, giving it the name Mauritius in honour of their prince Maurice. 10. 1600-1700. 1. Not long after the coasts of Cathay or China began to be better kno%vn to the maritime nations of the west, and to be brought under the influence of the Christian religion by the Jesuit missionaries, the Manchu Tatars from beyond the great wall on the north-east took advantage of a civil strife in the empire to invade it. The rebel bands entered Peking, whereujjon the last of the Ming sovereigns strangled himself with his girdle, and a seven years' con- test began, which was to end in the establishment of the Tatar " Tsing " or pure dynasty. The Manchu Tatar conquerors were not, like the Mongols, a nomadic race, but a much more cultivated and agricultural people, and they had the wisdom to conform in great measure to the existing institutions of Chinese government ; but they altered the national Chinese costume, and compelled the men of the country to wear the badge of servitude implied in shaving the head and wearing the long Tatar queue with which we are now familiar in all pictures of Chinamen. 2. In the latter part of the century, the Russians, overrunning and con- quering Siberia, threatened the northern Manchu frontier, and a desultory warfare ensued with the Cossack freebooters which extended over thirty years ; but a mission was finally sent to the frontier, and the boundary dividing the two nations was settled by mutual agi'eement in 1689. 3. Westward of the Chinese Empire the Khanates of Turkistan do not appear to have materially altered their relative positions in this century. In Persia the period begins in the midst of the reign of Shah Abbas the Great, who distinguished his rule by recovering Kurdistan, Mosul, and Diarbekr for Persia from the Ottoman Turks in the west, and by taking Kandahar from the possessions of the Great Mogul on the 6ast. The reigns of his successors during this century were not marked by further increase of territory, but wei'e spent in promoting the internal prosperity of the kingdom. 4. This was the period, also, at which the Mohammedan empire in India was raised to its highest point of splendour and greatness by Shah Jehan, the " King of the World," who subjugated the kingdoms of Ahmednuggur, Bee- japur, and Golconda, on the Deccan plateau ; and by his son, the famous Aurungzeb, the crafty and ambitious " reviver of religion." It was during these reigns that tlie English began to gain a hold on India and to take a part in its politics ; we shall afterwards, however, have occasion to notice the chief events of their arrival and estalilishment. 5. Coming now westward to the Ottoman empire, we find its Sultans con- tending successfully with Austria in the earlier part of the century for the possession of Hungary, but losing Mesopotamia, as we have seen, to the ,58 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. Persians in the east, and the allegiance of the Kliauates of the Crimea. Wars with the Poles and Venetians followed, in whicli the island of Candia was gained by the Turks, along with most of the old Venetian strongholds in the ^gean, though with some losses in Dalmatia. Later, a combined Polish and German army defeated a Turkish force which had advanced to lay siege to Vienna ; and the Austrians followed up their victory by repossessing themselves of Hungary after the great battle of Mohacz (1687). The peace of Caiiomitz at the end of the century put an end for ever to the Turkish dominion in Hungary. 6. For Russia the seventeenth centurj' began very disastrously with internal quarrels, which gave Sigismund of Poland the opportunity to invade the country, to take Moscow, and carry off the Czar to die in a Polish prison, and to leave the country completely disorganised. A rising of the Russians three years later drove the Poles out of the country, and placed the Czar Michael, of the house of Romanof, on the throne (1613). After restoring order in his empire, tliis sovereign concluiled a treaty with Sweden, giving that country the coasts of the Gulf of Finland. His successor carried on a war with Turkey, and obtained Smolensk from Poland and the aliandonment of all claims on Little Russia by the Turks. The close of the century brought Peter the Great to the throne, and opened his gi"and schemes for the reorganisation of Russia. T. Eastward the Russians had been busily pushing their conquests across the forest lauds of northern Asia. The river Obi had been reached, as we have seen, in the last century, and the towTi of Tobolsk had been founded. During the early part of tlie seventeenth century the Yenisei was passed and the Lena crossed ; the settlement of Yakutsk was made in 1632, and the shores of the sea of Okhotsk were reached in 1639. Thus, while the Manchu Tatars were advancing southward to the conquest of the Chinese Empire, the Russians were occupying the laud on their northern borders, and had confirmed themselves so strongly in its possession that they could conclude a treaty with the Chinese in 1689, which defined the Siberian-Chinese frontier in the line running from the sea of Okhotsk, north of the basin of the Amur, westward liy the great lake Baikal, and thence to the source mountains of the Obi, called tlie Ala Tau. 8. In the last cliapter we left Sweden at a time when the feeble rule of the successors of Gustavus Vasa had brought the land into disorder and had involved it in war with Russia, Poland, and Denmark. Early in the seven- teenth century^ Gustavus Adolphus, grandson of Vasa, succeeded to the throne, established a feudal or military government, drove the Danes out of the Baltic coasts of Sweden, opening up the ocean route to western Europe ; allying himself with the Hollanders, he obtained a settlement of the Russian limits. The new boundary line included in Sweden the country beyond the south coast of the Gulf of Finland. A settlement with Poland was next agreed on, which gave to Sweden the Baltic coast districts of ElMng, Braunsherg, Pillau, and Memd. Gustavus's hands were now free to carry out a cherislied plan to aid the Protestants of Germany in their struggle with the Catholic League. Marching south at the head of 15,000 men, he gave the Catholics good reason to fear the " snow king and his bodyguard," for he crossed the Danube, gained a great victory at Ingolstadt, marching triumphantly to Munich, and dying on the victorious field of Lntzen (1632). 9. The reign of his successor, Charles X., was also a warlike one. Poland was again invaded, when Russia, Denmark, and Prussia combined against the northern king. From Holstein Charles at once marched across the frozen Belt to the Danish capital, before which he dictated the peace of Boeskild. The reign of Charles XL was also characterised by success abroad ; and at the close of the century, when young Charles XII. had newly ascended HISTORICAL. 59 the throne, we find Sweden so strong as to have become the oliject of a com- bined attack ujion it by the neiglibouring powers. The young king, however, tlireatening Copenhagen, compelled the Danes to a new peace, and with only 8000 Swedes stormed the Russian camp wth its army of 50,000 at Narva in November 1700. 10. In Norway and Denmark, beyond the frequent contests with Sweden referred to, there is nothing of moment to occupy us at this time. 11. During the first half of the seventeenth century, Germany was kept in ferment by the succession of contests which are generally termed the " Thirty Years' War " (1612-1648), and which originated with attempts of the Catholics to deprive the Protestants of the liberties they had attained. The treaty of Westphalia (or of Miinster) drawn up by congresses of all the great continental powers of Europe, restored tranquillity to Germany and established a new system of political equilibrium in Europe. By this treaty, the independence of the United Provinces of the Netherlands was recognised by Spain, and that of Switzerland by Germany, which last country was cut up into a multitude of petty states. 12. In former paragraphs we have referred to the forcible Christianisation and conquest of the lands south of the Baltic by the Teutonic knights, the cession of west Prussia to Poland, and the declaration of the remainder of the country as fief to that kingdom. The Grand Masters of the Order subse- quently took the title of Dukes of Prussia (by one of whom the university of KiJnigsberg was founded in 1544). Early in the seventeenth century the Duchy of Prussia became incorporated with the Electorate of Brandenburg. During tlie thirty years' war the country was alternately a prey to the Swedish and Imperial armies ; but the treaty of Westphalia restored to it Eastern Pome- rania and other territories, and the aid given by the Elector Frederick Williana to Bling Charles of Sweden in the taking of Warsaw (1656) was recomjjensed by the complete emancipation of the Prussian Duchy from Polish dejiendence. Frederick William, called the " Great Elector," now devoted himself to con- solidating and advancing the prosperity of his dominions. Such was his success that Prussia now rose to the rank of a great European power. Frederick III., who succeeded him, exhibited the same zeal for the amelioration and extension of his dominions, and was crowned first King of Prussia at Kiinigs- berg in 1701. 13. The politics of France in the earlier portion of the century were directed by the great Cardinal Richelieu, who, in furtherance of his great ob- ject of humbling the power of the house of Austria, allied himself ^vith the Protestants in Germany, and with their champion Gustavus of Sweden, involving France in long and costly wars. At home, however, he ojjpressed the Protest- ant party and overthrew the jiolitical jjower of the Reformers or Huguenots, conducting in person the siege and capture of their stronghold La Rochelle. During the minority of Louis XIV., the French nobles seeking to shake off the authority of the Crown, and the political faction known as the Frondeiirs, caused gi'eat domestic disturbances ; but with the assumption of absolute j)Ower by the young king (1661) a new era began for France ; prospei'ity was again restored ; the military successes of Louis's generals, Turenne and Conde, were most brilliant, and the borders of France were greatly enlarged. First, in virtue of his claim to it as the son-in-law of Philip IV. of Spain, Louis mastered the portion of Flanders known as French Flanders, and the whole of Franche Comte. The triple alliance of England, the Netherlands, and Sweden, compelled him to relinquish the latter, and arrested for a time his course of conquest ; but two years later, after seizing Lorraine, he marched into the Netherlands, conquering half the country. Ten cities of Alsace also fell into his power, and the free German city of Strassburg was taken in 1681. During 60 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. the earlier part of his reign, manufactures had hegun to flourish greatly — the textures of the Gobelins, the silks of Tours and Lyon, and the tine cloths of the northern towns, Louviers, Ahberille, Sedan, acquired great celebrity. Not long after the zenith of his power and influence had been reached and passed, Louis fell under the influence of the Jesuits ; the efi'ect of the change was the adoption of severe measures against the Protestants, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had given them liberty of worship. The result of this despotic act, disastrous for France, was the exodus from the country of not fewer than 400,000 of the most industrious and intelligent of its people, chiefly manufacturers and artisans, who carried with them into exile, to all parts of the known world, their skill, knowledge, and taste. From them England especially learned the art of silk manufacture, and many other in- dustrial arts. Towards the close of the century an invasion of south Germany led to a coalition against France ; and, his resources being exhausted, Louis signed the Treaty of Ryswick (between Delft and The Hague) concluded between England, France, Spaiji, and Germany, 1697. 14. The seventeenth century opened for Britain with the union of the crowns of England and Scotland, under James I. ; then followed the disturbed reign of Charles I., beginning badly wth the unsuccessful expedition against Cadiz, and the loss of the fleet off Rochelle. His persecutions of the Puritans in England, and of the Presbyterians in Scotland, and the embitterment of popular feeling, brewed the storm which broke out in the civil wars and the battles of EdgehUl and Marston Moor. The final defeat of the royalists at Naseby was followed by the execution of Charles in 1649, and the protectorate of Cromwell, under which England was respected abroad and was brilliantly successful at sea against the Spaniards. Charles the Second was at the Hague at the time of his father's execution, and immediately assuming the title of King proceeded to Scotland, and was crowned at Scone in 1651 ; putting himself at the head of the Scots, he marched into England, only to be de- feated on the field of Wcuxester, whence he escaped amid many dangers to France. After the death of the Protector, a reversal of popular feeling recalled Charles from France to the English throne, when he began his dishonourable and dissolute reign, persecuting all Presbji;erians and Nonconformists at home, agreeing for money to carry on war ^\ith the Netherlands, till compelled by the appearance in the Thames of the Dutch fleet under De Ruyter to make an ignominious peace. James IL now succeeded, and by his tjTanny estranged all classes of his subjects. 15. The independence of the United Provinces (the Netherlands) had been acknowledged by the treaty of Munster (1648). During the reign of Charles II. of England they had been engaged in a seven years' contest with Louis XIV. of France, which had terminated in an honourable way for the United Provinces, and the power of the " Stadtholder," William, Prince of Orange, 1 who had married Mary, the eldest daughter of the Duke of York, afterwards James II. of England, had become great in Europe. The Stadt- holder had leagued himself with the malcontents in England, and when dis- attection was at its height, landed at Torhay (1688) with 15,000 English and Dutchmen, entered London as a national deliverer, and Parliament gave the crown to William and Mary. The adherents of James held out in Scotland and Ireland till the battle of the Boyne terminated the contest, and James fled to France. Then Britain and Holland came into close union against France. 16. We left the Spanish Peninsula, in the last section, at the time of the death of Philip II., when Portugal had been reduced to a Spanish province ; 1 A principality now comprised in the French department of Vaucluse. HISTOEICAL. 6 1 but the Spanish kingdom had been impoverislied in unsuccessful wars in the Netherlands, and in the attempts against England. One of the earliest acts of his successor Philip III. was the unwise expulsion from the Peninsula of the remaining Moriscoes, or half-caste Moors, wlio had been allowed by Ferdinand the Catholic to remain ; about half a million of these industrious and peace- able inhabitants were thus driven from the land. The reign of Charles II. was still more unfortunate ; Spanish armies and fleets were everywhere defeated, and the wealth of America was in vain poured into the enervated country. 17. A few years before the peace of Westphalia secured the independence of Holland from the Spanish yolce, Portugal freed itself by a rebellion (1640) from the forced union with Spain, which had lasted for 60 years, and had involved the coimtry in war and disaster at home, as well as abroad in the Indies. 18. In Italy, during this century, the Papal States grew out to their widest limit. Venetia was at war with the Turks ; and Naples and Sicily, in the south of the peninsula, continued under the sway of Spain. 19. Across in north Africa the Algerians continued to harass the powers of Christendom trading in the Mediterranean, and their insolence at sea increased. They even attacked the south coasts of France, comj)elling Louis XIV. to retaliate by bombarding Algiers (1682) ; when, by way of replying to the cannonade, the Dey caused the French consul to be shot off from the mouth of a cannon. The result of the punishment was indecisive ; nor were the English and Dutch fleets more successful in repressing the ferocity of the Corsairs. 20. In Marocco, the empire that had extended its limits to the Soudan in the previous century fell to pieces in this, and was succeeded (1647) by the government of the Sherifs of Tafilet, who conquered Marocco proper and Fez, united the whole under one rule, and founded the djmasty whicli reigns at present. The influence of Marocco again spread southward till it reached, in tlie middle of the century, even to the borders of the Portuguese settlements in Guinea. If we now turn to look at the progress of conquest and discovery beyond the seas during the seventeenth century, it cannot fail to he remarked how completely the spread of knowledge on the outer borders of the known world was controlled by events which took place in western Europe. We have remarked the gradual crippling and decay of the maritime supremacy of Spain and Portugal, and the rise of that of the Dutch and British into strength. Maritime enterprise during this century passed to Holland, England, and France. 21. Just at the end of the sixteentli century, the Dutch first opened uj) trading communication with the East Indies, and entered into alliances with the Achinese of Sumatra ; two years later their East India Company was formed. Spain and Portugal being united in war with the Netherlands at home in Europe, the contest was extended to the Indies, where by violence and intrigue the Dutch began to oust the Portuguese from their possessions. A footing was also gained in the Spanish half of the world, for in the year 1600 the Dutch captured the island of St. Eiistatius ; and five years later tlie British settled in Barbadoes, the most easterly of the Antilles. 22. Among the last important discoveries made by the Spaniards in the Pacific were those of the island of Hagiltaria (now known as Tahiti) by the 62 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY, voyager Quiros, and of the strait whicli has been named from its discoverer Luis Vaez de Torres, who sailed into it in 1605, and who saw the northern extremity of the great southern continent, afterwards to be made known. 23. Wliile the Dutch were wresting the Spice Islands from the Portuguese, a band of English gentlemen and a few artisans went out to Sir Walter P^aleigh's Virginia, and formed (May 1607) the first permanent English colony on the North American shores, foimding James Toiva on the James River (named after King James), and buying land and provisions from the friendly Indians. A year later the French were following up the discoveries of Jacques Cartier on the St. Lawrence ; Champlain discovered the great Lake Ontario, and founded the city of Quebec, which for more than a century was the centre of French trade and civilisation in North America, and the f)oint whence the efforts of the Roman Catholic missionaries radiated. 24. During these two years the navigator Hendrik Hudson was making vain attempts to penetrate the north-east passage by Novaya Zemlya ; giving up hope of finding a passage there, he sailed a third time to the north-west by Davis Strait, in a vessel fitted out by the Dutch East India Company (1609). Reaching America about latitude 44° north, he discovered the beautiful river which bears his name, and took possession of it for Holland. Next year he again bore to the north-west, and on the farther side of Davis Strait passed through the channel now known as Hudson Strait, and entered the vast bay beyond, which he took to be none other than an inlet of the Pacific, an opinion which was contradicted some years later by the researches of Baffin. He resolved to winter here and to follow up his discoveries in the following spring, but his crew mutinied, and placed him with his gun in a small boat at the mercy of the waves, after which nothing was ever heard of this brave mariner. 25. As early as 1611 the solitary Bermudas Islands were colonised from the new British settlements in Virginia ; in the same year a Dutch navi- gator sailing north of Iceland discovered the island which takes his name, Jan Mayen, with its volcano sending flames and smoke out of its snow-clad cone. 26. About the year 1614 there was living at Amsterdam a famous mer- chant named Lemaire, wlio then began to interest himself in geographical discovery ; for it had been a recognised rule in Europe since the time of Columbus that any one making a new discovery beyond the seas had the rights and use of whatever he found. The Dutch East India Company had now been successful in exploring for themselves the way by the Straits of Magellan, and had consequently the exclusive right to the use of this passage to the South Seas. With some other merchants of the town of Hoom, Lemaire joined to form an "Austral Company," and fitted out two ships, the "Eendragt" and " Het Hoorn," placing them under the command of the navigators Schouten and Jacob Lemaire, son of the merchant. In June 1615 the vessels left the Texcl, and by the end of December had reached tlie south of Patagonia, making what was then considered a very rapid passage through the Atlantic. Here the yacht " Hoorn " took fire, and was totally wrecked, and her crew was transferred to the "Eendragt." Passing the eastern entrance of the Strait of Magellan, they came upon the long eastward jiromontory of Tierra del Fuego, through which they soon found a broad deep passage to the south ; the land east of this they named, in honour of the States-General of Holland, Staaten Land. Thence bearing south and west against the adverse winds, they passed along the island-bound south coast of Tierra del Fuego, and, reaching a high rocky island peak, which they took to be the extremity of the mainland, they named it Kaep van Hoorn, in honour of the native town of Schouten and manv of his sailors. Thence HISTORICAL. 6 3 sailing into the open Soutli Sea and northward by Juan Fernandez island, they crossed the ocean to the East Indies, being the first to see the land afterwards called New Britain. Schouteu alone of the discoverers again I'eached Holland, his companion Lemaire having died on the homeward voyage.^ 27. The British East India Company had meanwhile been establishing itself on the mainland; in 16r2 they had factories at Sural, Ahmedabad, Cam- baya, and Goyha on the coast of the Gulf of Cambay, and in 1615 the English ambassador was well received in the court of the Great Mogul. 28. It was about this time that the great south land, now known as Aus- tralia, began to be made known. The Dutch, finding the harbours on the east coast of Africa and in India closed against them by the jealousy of the Portuguese, sought for a passage in more southerly latitudes ; and thus, partly by accident, partly by design, they discovered a large portion of Australia. In 1605 Captain Saris, of the Dutch yacht " Duiveken," was despatched from Bantam to search for a passage to the south of New Guinea, and obtained some glimpses of the north coast. In 1616 another Dutch voyager. Dirk Hartog, in the ship " Eendragt," sailed down its western shores as far as 27° S., and his discovery is perpetuated in the name of Dirk Hartog Island, one of those which enclose Shark's Bay, on the west Australian coast. 29. The course of discovery and colonisation now takes us back to the Atlantic. In Britain, the hope of the possible discovery of a shorter north- west passage to the Pacific was still strong. The accoimt of the complete closure of the inland sea discovered by Hudson was not universally credited, and accordingly, in 1615, Captain Bylot sailed for that bay, without, how- ever, finding any outlet from it. Next year, with his pilot Baffin, he sailed up Davis Strait, reaching 78° N., and, after a superficial examination of the coast, came to the conclusion that this also was a great gulf without outlet. Hence the name Baffin Bay was given to this, the northern broad ex-panse of the strait which divides the American Arctic islands from Greenland. 30. The violent efi'orts made by King James to extirpate Puritanism in England drove a large number of the Independents to embark at Plymouth, in 1620, for the New World. These emigrants, known as the " Pilgrim Fathers," disembarked from the " Mayflower" on the North American coast, in lat. 42° N. on a bay about 200 miles north-east of the river-mouth discovered Ijy Hudson, and there founded the settlement of Nevj Plymouth, calling the land New Eng- land. A year afterwards the Dutch bought Ahmhattan Island (at the mouth of Hudson River, on which the central portion of the city of New York now stands) from the native Indians for twenty-four dollars, and founded there the settle- ment of New Amsterdam, naming the country round it New Holland. Thus there were now five European settlements on the North American coast, — those of the Spaniards in Florida, the English Cavaliers in Virginia, the Dutch at the mouth of tlie Hudson, the English Puritans more to the north, and the French on the St. Lawrence ; in 1638 a sixth was added by the Swedes, who then colonised the Delaware river. 31. In the West Indies also the nortliern nations began to gain ground on the Spanish lands. Barbadoes, as we have noticed, was already British; St. Christopher, or St. Kitts, was added in 1623, and from thence English emigrants passed to Nevis in 1628. Antigua, and Montserrat followed in 1632. Then the French came to settle on Martinique and Gua.daloupe in 1635, and about that time British settlements were formed on the South 1 On reaching the East Indies and tlie Dutch settlements in Java, tlie Govenior there, disbelieving the report of their discovery of a new passage, or taking it to bo adverse to the interests of the Dutch India Company, contlseated the " Eendragt " and lier crew. 64 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. American mainland in Guayana at the mouths of the Berbice and Surinam, and by the French in Cayenne, fartlier east. 32. The French now began to appear in the Indian Ocean also; for in 1642 we find them taking possession of the southern island of the Mascarenhas, and naming it He Bourbon, and also settling on the north-west of Madagascar. 33. Meanwhile the Dutch had been extending their circle of exploration from their settlements, and the western coast of Australia had been traced along its whole extent ; for in 1619 the merchants named Edel and Hout- man had passed beyond Dirk Hartog's farthest, to 32^° S., and named the coast-land there EdeVs Land. Another Dutch ship, in 1622, reached the south-west cape, giving it the name of the ship, Leeuivin (or Lioness). Before the end of 1627 the south-west corner had been turned, and another Dutch- man sailing along it in the " Guldezeepard " (golden sea-lion), gave the name Nuyts' La7id to the coast, in honour of a distinguished passenger, Peter Nuyts — a name which is preserved in Nuyts Archipelago in the great Australian bight. 34. Far more extended discoveries were made in this direction by the navigator Abel Jansen Tasman, who sailed from Batavia in November 1642. Rounding the west coast of Australia, and then turning east, he came upon what he believed to be a portion of the same southern continent of New Hol- land, and named the new territory Van Dievien^s Land, in honour of the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. An island on its eastern coast he called Maria, after Van Diemen's daughter. Sailing still farther east into the Pacific, Tasman discovered the shore of a new land, which he took to be a continuation of the Staaten Land of Schouten and Lemaire, and named it accordingly; but Hendrik Brouwer, in the follo\ving year, showed that it could not be united in any way to the Staaten Land east of Tierra del Fuego, and re-named it New Zealand, from the Dutch province. 35. We have already noticed the rapid advance of the Russian Cossacks over Siberia, conquering and rendering tributary the native tribes of Tnn- guses and Yakuts ; how the Arctic Ocean was reached at the mouth of the Lena in 1636, and the Pacific at the sea of Okhotsk in 1639. Not halting at this barrier, the Cossacks took to the sea at the farthest limits of their land journeys, and one of them, named Deshenev, as early as 1648, reported that he had sailed between Asia and America, and that the two continents were not imited. His whole voyage, however, was at the time regarded as a fable, and was not confirmed till nearly a century after. 36. The leading movement of subsequent years in the Asiatic region appears to have been the extension of Dutch power over Portuguese in the East India Islands, — in Celebes, Borneo,^ and at Padamj in Sumatra. It was in the middle of this century also that the attention of the Dutch East India Company was first effectively directed towards South Africa, when, in 1652, Jan Anthony van Riebeek, a surgeon in the service of the company, first settled on the promontory of the Cape of Good Hope with about a hundred officers and servants of the company. On the Gold Coast of Africa the Dutch had already supplanted the Portuguese, and there the British first settled in 1664. 37. Three or four years later the French gained a footing on the Senegal coast, and afterwards formed their Senegal Company. In 1668 they first appear in India at Surat, and four years later we find them buying their possession of Pondichery from the native princes. 38. In America the British dominion was extended by the addition of one of the Virgin Islands (1666), and by the formation in 1670 of the Hudson Bay 1 A corruption of the native name Bruni or Brunei. \ 1, , l4 HISTOEICAL. 6 5 Company, wliich at first consisted of Prince Rupert, cousin of Charles II. of England, and certain associates of his who were invested with the absolute pro- prietorship and sovereignty of all the territory draining to Hudson's Bay and its strait. In 1690 this fur company was in full working, and had built several forts and factories on the coasts, whence from time to time their operations extended inland. The French also, after their countryman La Salle first descended (1682) the great river Mississippi, "the father of waters," invaded Spanish claims by settling in Louisiaiia, about the mouth of the great river, in 1699. 11. 1700-1800. According to tlie general plan that we have been following, we now return to review briefly the greater changes, extensions, and contractions, of power within the Old World, before taking up again the outline of discovery and conquest beyond the seas, within the next hundred years. 1. Of China under the prosperous rule of the Manchu Emperors there is little to be told that affects the outer world. One of its rulers during this cen- tury (Kien-lung) had a reign of sixty years of uninterrujited external peace, and was successful in many military expeditions against tlie interior tribes, over whom he asserted the authority of the empire. It was only during the latter part of his reign (1796) that the turbulent and aggressive prince of the State of Nepal, on the southern slope of the Himalaya range in north India, invaded Tibet on the high Asiatic plateau, and plundered the Lama monastery of Teshu Lumpo near Shigatzc. 2. Tibet had for several centuries been partially tributary to China ; its danger now gave an opportunity for the intervention of the empire : a Chinese army marched into it, defeated the Nepalese, and drove them back across the Himalaya. From that time onwards Tibet has remained under Chinese control ; a Chinese viceroy sits at Lhassa, and the Grand Lama of Tibet, or Pope of Buddhism, retains no more than spiritual authority. The limits of the empire were even extended during the reign of Kien-lxmg to eastern Bokhara at tlie heads of the Oxus and Jaxartes. 3. Near the end of the century the semi-tributary State of Anam or Cochin China was extended by incorporating Tonquin, its sovereign receiving aid in this from France. Burma, another State of the peninsula of farther India, also begins to acquire importance at this period; it was in 1752 that Aloung-Pra, the most celebrated warrior-king in Burman history, arose, sub- dued the hostile Peguans and incorporated their country and many neighbouring States, thus forming an empire wliich continued to expand to such an extent as to attract to itself a Chinese military expedition (1767) for its conquest, which, however, was destroyed on the river Irawadi. 4. The expansion of Russian power, both in Europe and Asia, is one of the great features of the century. European Russia at the beginning of this period was still shut out from navigable seas, — by Sweden, from the Baltic in the north, and by Turkey from the Euxine in the south, — leaving only the northern port of Archangel on the icy White Sea as the outlet of its ships. One of the most cherished designs of Peter the Great, in the middle of whose reign the century begins, was that of creating an armed and mercantile fleet for Russia ; for this, however, tlie possession of accessible seaports was essential, and these were to be obtained only by breaking through Turkish or Swedish territory. F 60 THE LONDON GEOGEAPHY. The Turlvish port of Azof at the mouth of the Don was taken after a long siege (1696). In the north the Czar joined with Poland and Denmark in attacking Sweden, and though defeated, as we have seen, at Narva, in 1700, he laid the foundation of the city of St. Petersburg in Swedish territory in 1703, and by routing the Swedish army at Poltava in 1709 gained for Russia the whole of the Baltic provinces and part of Finland. Two years later an unsuccessful war with Turkey lost him the hard-won port of Azof ; but in the north his arms were crowned with success ; the Swedish fleet was defeated at Hango, and the outlet of the Baltic was secured. 5. In 1722 a war was begun with Persia in order to open up the Caspian Sea to Russian commerce, and for a time the provinces of Persia bordering on that sea were in Russian hands. The reign of Catherine II. (1762-1796) was not less glorious for Russia than that of Peter the Great had been. Her suc- cessful wars with Poland and Sweden in the north, and with Turkey and Persia in the south, widely extended the limits of the empire. In a scheme for the partition of Turkey between Austria and Russia, the former aggressive power was constantly defeated, but tlie Russians were as uniformly successful : the Turkish provinces on the Danube fell into their hands, and the main army of the Turks was signally defeated before Shumla. In spite of a clear treaty concluded in 1774, the Crimea and the whole country eastward to the Caspian were immediately afterwards annexed. Again war broke out ; the Russian armies again overran the northern pro\inces of Turkey, and by the treaty of Jassy (1792) the Dniester river was made the boundary line, and the Crimea and Kuban were finally ceded to Russia, which thus gained the whole north shores of the Black Sea. 6. It was during the reign of Catherine that the Russian Empire was first divided into governments, an arrangement which, with some modifications, still subsists. Power was also being rapidly consolidated in Asiatic Russia ; already in 1727 a line of armed Cossack outposts was drawn along the Chinese frontier from the sea of Okhotsk to the Ala Tau Mountains ; in 1772 these posts were increased in numbers and strengthened by regular troops. Discovery had also been progressing towards the north and east, defining more clearly the natural limits of the new possession. Adventurers had even gone beyond its shores : the Liakhov, or New Siberian islands in the icy Arctic Sea, with their stores of mammoth ivory, had been found; and the voyager Vitus Bering, sailing out from a port of the peninsula of Kamtchatka in 1728, had reached the entrance of the strait which bears his name, coufirming the separation of Asia from America that had been reported by the Cossack Deshenev. 7. Sweden's wars with Russia in the early part of the century, whiclt lost for her the south-eastern coasts of the Baltic, have been already referred to ; these overwhelmed the country with debt, and were followed by a long period of disorganisation. In 1788 Sweden again went to war with Russia, at the time when that country was engaged in active hostilities against the Turks, but without advantageous issue. 8. Denmark during this period was still united to Norway ; it exercised no very important influence in the aff'airs of Europe, but increased greatly in wealth and commerce. A Danish Asiatic Company was formed in 1733, and the French gave their share of the Virgin Islands in the West Indies to Den- mark, on the condition tliat they should not be made over to any other power without tlie sanction of France. It was during the reign of Frederick V. (1746-1766) that a Greenland Company was formed, and that a number of learned men, among whom was Niebulir, the explorer of Arabia, were sent from Denmark to travel in the east. 9. Prussia, we have already seen, had risen in the first year of this century HISTOKICAL. 6 7 to the rank of a great European power. Frederick William created for it his splendid army of tall soldiers, which his successor Frederick the Great (1740- 1786), used to sucli advantage for the extension of the kingdom, beginning his career by occupj'ing Silesia, and holding it against tlie utmost efforts of Austria, The desperate conflict of the " Seven Years' War " (1756-1763), in which all the powers of central Europe were engaged, made no change in the territorial distribution, but left Frederick the acknowledged sovereign of Silesia. 10. Poland had been closely allied Avith Russia against the Swedes, and thus the dependence of that country on the stronger power had begun. From this time its government fell more and more under Russian intiuence, the intensely national spirit of the Poles being craftily turned so as to keep alive the dissensions which were surely weakening the country. A few zealous patriots, alarmed at the closing grasp of Russia, and supported by Turkey, raised an army and declared war. 11. It was at this juncture that Frederick of Prussia proposed to Austria and Russia an iniquitous partition of Poland ; the mediation of the other powers of Europe was sought by Poland in vain, so that in 1772 a first parti- tion of a large part of the country was effected by these three powers. A second partition of still larger territories between Russia and Prussia followed in 179.3. The Poles now became desperate, and compelled the Prussians to retreat to their own country, and several times routed the Russian troops. But Austria, chagrined at having had no share in the second division, now again appeared on the scene, and fresh Russian forces arriving, the patriot army of Kosciusco was finally defeated, Warsaw was captured, and the Polish monarchy for ever annihilated. The third and last partition of this unfortunate kingdom gave all eastern and central Poland to Russia, Posen to Prussia, and Galicia and Bukoviua to Austria. 12. All western Europe became involved in the very first year of this cen- tury in the long contest known as the war of the Spanish succession (1700- 1713). Charles II. of Spain died without heir, and Louis of France and Leopold of Austria became the rival claimants for the vacant throne, which carried with it the sovereignty of the Spanish Netherlands, the Milanese, Naples and Sicily in Italy, and the vast American possessions. The Austrian party at first prevailed in Spain, but Louis succeeded in undermining their influence and in having his second grandson Philip declared king. This union could not fail to endanger the independence of every other state in western Europe, and the subsequent occujiatiou of the Netherlands by Louis brought about the alliance of Britain, Germany, and Holland against France and the Spanish usurper. A combined army of these powers, under Marlborough, attacked the French in Belgium. The Austrians also sent an army into Italy, Bavaria alone declaring for France. The defeat at Blenheim, in Bavaria, lost the French their hold on Germany ; at liamillies the fate of the Spanish Netherlands was decided ; and in the battle of Turin the French power in north Italy was shattered. A force of British and Dutch troops also landing at Lisbon, were joined by the Portuguese, and invaded Spain from the west, ulti- mately driving the Bourbon forces across the PjTcnees. By the peace of Utrecht, which concluded this contest, France ceded to Britain her American possessions of Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia, with St. Kitts in the West Indies ; the Italian possessions of Spain were renounced in favour of Austria ; the rock of Gibraltar and the island of Minorca were given up to Britain ; Portugal gained the country north of the Amazon in South America; and the profitable "asiento" or monopoly of the supply of negro slaves to the American colonies was transferred to Britain. 13. The death of the Emjieror Charles VI. of Austria (1740), liy which the male line of the house of Hapsburg became e.\tinct, was the signal for another 68 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. war among the powers of Europe, which continiied with alternating success for eight years, but left the limits of the various states, at the peace of Aix which concluded it, very much as before. 14. In 1756 broke out the Seven Years' War, in which Britain took the part of Prussia against France, Austria, and Russia ; during this contest Wolfe made his conquest of the French Canadian possessions, and Clive took from them their settlements in India. 15. It was soon after the conclusion of this war by the treaty of Paris, by which the greater part of the French colonial possessions were given up to Britain, that the first attempt was made to increase the finances of the United Kingdom by taxing the American colonies, a measure which excited the most determined opposition, ultimately leading to a war (1774) between them and the mother country, in which they were materially supported by her enemies France and Spain, and by Holland. Alter eight years of fighting this struggle concluded in the acknowledgment of the indejiendence of the American colonies and the formation of the Republic of the United States (1783), which we shall afterwards notice more particularly. 16. This war for freedom had disseminated republican ideas in the minds of the lower orders in France, where an incapable government and prodigal court threatened the bankruptcy of the state, and undoubtedly laid the seeds of the great revolution which was about to break out. Insurrections first alarmed Paris in 1789, when the people took possession of the Bastille, but the conciliations attempted by the king and nobles delayed the grand out- break till 1792, when a war with Austria was begun and the defeat of the French was visited on the unfortunate Louis. Revolt now broke loose in every part of France ; a reign of blood and terror succeeded, and all the surround- ing states combined against the new republic, till the brilliant exploits of the young general Napoleon Bonaparte, at the head of the French troops against the Austrians in Lombardy, turned all men's thoughts to follow his suc- cesses. 17. In 1797 Bonaparte was master in Italy, and Austria had been com- pelled to give up Belgium, which had been hers since the peace of Utrecht, and which was afterwards recognised as part of France. In Holland the French troops had been warmly received by the so-called patriots of the United Pro- vinces ; the Stadtholder William V. and his family (1795) had been obliged to escape to England in a fishing-boat, and the Batavian Republic, under the protection of France, had been set up. A year later Bonaparte undertook the famous expedition against Egyjit, in whicli the battle of the Pyramids made the French for a time masters of the Nile Delta. This also was the expedition which gave Nelson the opportunity of signalising his first independent com- mand by the grand victory of the Nile, in which he utterly destroyed the French fleet and cut ofl' Napoleon's communications with Europe. Leaving his army behind, Bonaparte escaped from Alexandria, and we leave him at the end of the century First Consul of France, soon to extend the limits of his kingdom by further successes in Europe. 18. Passing by Portugal, now apathetic and subordinate, from which state the ancient glory had departed never to return, we come to the states which lie along the shores of the Mediterranean. Marocco we find remaining an independent state under the rule of the Sherifs of Tafilet ; Algeria, a military oligarchy, at the head of which was the Dey, and under him a strong Turkish militia, lawless and turbulent at home and piratical abroad, defying the greater Christian powers, and forcing tribute from the lesser on the waters of the Medi- terranean. Against them the last Spanish expedition, with 44 ships of war and 340 transports, carrying 25,000 soldiers, went fruitlessly in 1775. Tunis at this time had been made tributary to Algiers ; Egypt remained a HISTORICAL. 6 9 province of Turkey, administered by Pashas, until Bonaparte's invasion brought it for a year or two at tlie close of the century under the power of France. 19. The repeated aggressions of Russia and Austria in the Ottoman dominion in Europe, and the loss to Turkey of the lands bordering on the north coasts of the Black Sea, have been already alluded to. In part recom- pense for these losses the Turks received the Morea from the Venetians, and brought the whole of Greece again under Mohammedan dominion. 20. In Asia the story of the Ottoman Empire at this time connects itself with that of Persia. At the beginning of this century the Afghans of the east had accjuired independence and power, and Persia was ruled by an Afghan king, whose cruelties have made the name of his people hated in Persia to the present day. A notable leader, wlio has been called the Wallace of Persia, soon, however, appeared as the deliverer of the coimtry. This was Nadir Shah ; at first merely the leader of a band of outlaws who levied contri- butions on the province of Khorassan, by announcing his intention of expel- ling the hated race of the Afghans, he drew large numbers to his standard ; he reduced the cities of Mashhad and Herat, and afterwards subdued all Kho- rassan, and placed a Persian king again on the throne. He was then sent against the Turks (1731), and defeating them at Uamadan, regained for Persia the Armenian provinces. On returning after this campaign Nadir was himself crowned Shah. He resumed his war with the Turks, and granted terms of peace only on condition of recovering the province of Georgia. He now advanced against the Afghans in the East, and conquering them passed on to the north-west provinces of India against the Great Mogul ; took Delhi, and returned to Persia with an enormous booty, including the famous dia- mond, the " Koh-i-nur." He next drove back the Uzbegs on the north, and reducing Bokhara and Kharezm, or Khiva, restored for a time to Persia the wide limits of the empire in the days of the Sassanian kings. On his death anarchy again liroke loose in Persia, and before the end of the century we find Afghanistan and Baluchistan finally separated as independent states from Persia proper, and large territories in the north-west, bordering on the Caspian, in the hands of Russia, to which empire Georgia was also soon to be added as a new province. 21. The frequent wars between Britain and France at home in this period carried hostilities out to India, where the French and British were already sufficiently jealous of one another's influence with the native j)rinces. It was now that the great soldier-statesman Clive laid the foundation of British supremacy in the East, breaking the power of France in this region by his great victory at Arcot in 1751. The next great event here was the siege and capture of Calcutta by the viceroy of the Great Mogiil in Bengal, when the prisoners captured suffered the horrors of the "Black Hole of Calcutta." In command of an expedition fitted out at Madras, Clive soon recovered Calcutta, and before 1765, Bengal, with part of Behar and Orissa, had been ceded by the Great Mogul to the East India Company. The power of the great Mohammedan ruler of Northern India had indeed already suffered greatly from the expedition of Nadir Shah. Ten years later two powerful Mohammedan sovereigns of Southern India, Hyder Ali and the Nizam of the Deccan, assisted by French officers, combined against the English, but the able policy of Warren Hastings broke uj) the federation and defeated Hyder Ali. War next broke out with Tippoo, Hyder All's son and successor, who had invaded Travancore, then under British protection. Seringapatam, his capital, was taken, and half his dominions ceded to the company as the price of peace. Not long after this the bad faith of Tippoo and his intrigues with the French again drew the British, under Marquis Wellesley, to Seringapatam (1799), when Tippoo lost both his crown and his life. 70 THE LONDON GEOGRAPHY. It remains for us now to sketch out the progress of geo- graphical discovery beyond the limits of the Old World during this period. 22. One of the earliest important expeditions sent out from the Old World in this century was that of Hans Egede, a Norwegian clergyman, who, believ- ing it possible that the old Greenland colonies might still be in existence, determined to seek out his forlorn countrymen ; accordingly in 1721 he embarked vnth liis wife and family and 46 emigrants, sailed for the west coast of Greenland, and there founded the settlements which at present occupy that rock and ice bound shore. 23. We have already referred to the Eussian expedition from Petro- paulovsk in Kamtchatka under Bering, in which he discovered the straits between Asia and America. After some years spent in exploring the Asiatic coasts of Siberia, this voyager sailed in 1741 from Okhotsk out to the east, sighted land in about 584° N- ^'"^ '^v^s the first to trace the American coast in the Alaska peninsula, and to discover the high volcano called Mount St. Elias ; but it was not made certain by his voyage whether these were really parts of tlie American continent, or only the shores of islands lying between the mainlands. Bering followed the coast northward, till, overtaken by sickness and storms, his ship was wrecked on the island of Awatska, since called Bering Island, and he died there in December 1741. 24. About this time the search for the " north-west passage " was renewed, and several ships were sent to explore the coasts of Hudson Bay, where it was believed some outlet to the west would be discovered ; but in vain ; and though a reward of £20,000 was ofiered by the British Government to the fortunate discoverer of such a navigable passage to the Pacific, the search was abandoned for almost the whole remaining part of the century. On the side of the " north-east," the search for a navigable route had also been abandoned by the western nations of Europe ; Russia, however, was exploring the Arctic shores of her vast Siberian territory, and a Russian walrus-fisher for the first time found the eastern or inner coast of Novaya Zemlya in 1742. 25. Two years before this, war between England and Spain ha\ang again broken out in 1739, Lord George Anson was sent out from England, command- ing a fleet which was intended to inflict whatever injury was possible on Spanish commerce and colonies in the South Seas. His fleet of seven vessels was scattered before rounding the stormy Cape Hoorn, but four of these arrived at the island of Juan Fernandez ; with these he captured a Spanish galleon from Accqndco, and steering across the Pacific discovered a number of the smaller uninhabited islands which lie west of the Sandwich group. He reached Spithead again in 1744, having circumnavigated the globe in a cruise of three years and nine months. 26. Another British oflicer, Captain Vancouver (1791), was the next to make any important discovery in the Pacific ; during four years of incessant exertion he explored the shores of the island on the west coast of North America which now bears his name, and the labyrinth of islands and sounds which extends thence to the limit of Bering's discoveries, thus showing for the first time that no navigable passage existed between this coast and Hudson Bay, as had been so confidently hojiied and expected. 27. Shortly before these discoveries were made. General Wolfe had set out (1759) from England with his little army of 8000 men to take Canada from the French. Arrived there, he landed on the island of Orleans in the St. La^vTence opposite Quebec, scaled the Heights of Abraham at fearful risk, and made his memorable capture of the city. At the date of the union of HISTOKICAL. 71 Canada to Britain by the Treaty of Paris, 1763, the colony had gathered a French poiralation of 65,000, inhabiting the immediate banks of the broad St. Lawrence. 28. Soon after his succession to the throne, and after the close of the Seven Years' War, George III. of England took advantage of the returning time of peace to send out, one after the other, a number of voyagers, who made them- selves famous by their circumnavigations of the globe and discoveries of new lands. Byron, Wallis, Carteret, and Cook, all left these shores soon after 1764 ; it was at this time also that Bougainville set out to make the first French circumnavigation of the globe. To Byron geography owes the first survey of the Falkland Islands; to Wallis the discovery of the Queen Clmrlotte Group of islets in the Pacific, and the re-finding of the beautiful Tahiti ; while Carteret made known the afterwards famous Pitcairn Island, and was the first to sail through St. George's Channel, between New Britain and New Ireland ; but Cook's three great voyages formed the great geographical event of the century. 29. Captain Cook's surveys of the shores of the lately acquired possessions of Newfoundland and Labrador introduced him to the notice of the Royal Society, who gave him command of an expedition to the Pacific to observe the approacliing transit of Venus over tlie sun's disc ; and he sailed from Ply- mouth in August 1768. Having passed round South America to Tahiti in the Pacific, he there successfully carried out the main object of his voyage, and leav- ing that island in July of the following year, steered westward for New Zealand, which had not been seen by Europeans since Tasman's visit, 126 years before. He landed on the coast of North Island, at a place which he named Poverty Bay, in October 1769 ; the natives, the cannibal Maoris, as was afterwards learned, took his ship for a gigantic bird, and were thunderstruck at the beauty and size of its \vings. Nearly a year was spent in surveying the coasts of these islands, and thence sailing westward Cook discovered the eastern side of New Holland, or Australia, and coasted along nearly its whole length, taking possession of it in the name of Britain, and giving it the name of New South Wales. A landing was made in the inlet which was called Botany Bay (34° S.), from the great number of strange plants seen for the first time on its shores. He next turned north to New Guinea, and proved, by passing through Torres Strait, that the island was really separated from New Hol- land ; thence continuing his voyage by Java and the Cape of Good Hope, he reached the Dovras again in June 1771. 30. Geographers had long theoretically held that there must exist a great continent in the south to balance the mass of land in the northern hemisphere, and accordingly a vast " Terra Australis Incognita " was shown on most maps of the time, filling up the Antarctic regions. To ascertain the truth about this unknown land was the main object of Cook's second expedition in the ships " Resolution " and " Adventure," with which for three years he searched all round the icy Antarctic region, passing due east from the Cape of Good Hope to New Zealand, and thence round to Patagonia, steering south at frequent intervals, till brought to a halt each time by the close pack-ice of the Antarctic region. He thus made known the vast extent of the southern ocean, freeing it from the fantastic lands that had filled it up, an