The Story of Geographical Discovery: How the World Became Known Part 5

TO THE INDIES NORTHWARD--ENGLISH, FRENCH, DUTCH, AND RUSSIAN ROUTES

The discovery of the New World had the most important consequences on the relative importance of the different nations of Europe.

Hitherto the chief centres for over two thousand years had been round the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, and, as we have seen, Venice, by her central position and extensive trade to the East, had become a world-centre during the latter Middle Ages. But after Columbus, and still more after Magelhaens, the European nations on the Atlantic were found to be closer to the New World, and, in a measure, closer to the Spice Islands, which they could reach all the way by s.h.i.+p, instead of having to pay expensive land freights. The trade routes through Germany became at once neglected, and it is only in the present century that she has at all recovered from the blow given to her by the discovery of the new sea routes in which she could not join. But to England, France, and the Low Countries the new outlook promised a share in the world's trade and affairs generally, which they had never hitherto possessed while the Mediterranean was the centre of commerce. If the Indies could be reached by sea, they were almost in as fortunate a position as Portugal or Spain.

Almost as soon as the new routes were discovered the Northern nations attempted to utilise them, notwithstanding the Bull of Part.i.tion, which the French king laughed at, and the Protestant English and Dutch had no reason to respect. Within three years of the return of Columbus from his first voyage, Henry VII. employed John Cabot, a Venetian settled in Bristol, with his three sons, to attempt the voyage to the Indies by the North-West Pa.s.sage. He appears to have re-discovered Newfoundland in 1497, and then in the following year, failing to find a pa.s.sage there, coasted down North America nearly as far as Florida.

In 1534 Jacques Cartier examined the river St. Lawrence, and his discoveries were later followed up by Samuel de Champlain, who explored some of the great lakes near the St. Lawrence, and established the French rule in Canada, or Acadie, as it was then called.

Meanwhile the English had made an attempt to reach the Indies, still by a northern pa.s.sage, but this time in an easterly direction.

Sebastian Cabot, who had been appointed Grand Pilot of England by Edward VI., directed a voyage of exploration in 1553, under Sir Hugh Willoughby. Only one of these s.h.i.+ps, with the pilot (Richard Chancellor) on board, survived the voyage, reaching Archangel, and then going overland to Moscow, where he was favourably received by the Czar of Russia, Ivan the Terrible. He was, however, drowned on his return, and no further attempt to reach Cathay by sea was attempted.

The North-West Pa.s.sage seemed thus to promise better than that by the North-East, and in 1576 Martin Frobisher started on an exploring voyage, after having had the honour of a wave of Elizabeth's hand as he pa.s.sed Greenwich. He reached Greenland, and then Labrador, and, in a subsequent voyage next year, discovered the strait named after him. His project was taken up by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, on whom, with his brother Adrian, Elizabeth conferred the privilege of making the pa.s.sage to China and the Moluccas by the north-westward, north-eastward, or northward route. At the same time a patent was granted him for discovering any lands unsettled by Christian princes.

A settlement was made in St. John's, Newfoundland, but on the return voyage, near the Azores, Sir Humphrey's "frigate" (a small boat of ten men), disappeared, after he had been heard to call out, "Courage, my lads; we are as near heaven by sea as by land!" This happened in 1583.

Two years after, another expedition was sent out by the merchants of London, under John Davis, who, on this and two subsequent voyages, discovered several pa.s.sages trending westward, which warranted the hope of finding a northwest pa.s.sage. Beside the strait named after him, it is probable that on his third voyage, in 1587, he pa.s.sed through the pa.s.sage now named after Hudson. His discoveries were not followed up for some twenty years, when Henry Hudson was despatched in 1607 with a crew of ten men and a boy. He reached Spitzbergen, and reached 80 N., and in the following year reached the North (Magnetic) Pole, which was then situated at 75.22 N. Two of his men were also fortunate enough to see a mermaid--probably an Eskimo woman in her _kayak_. In a third voyage, in 1609, he discovered the strait and bay which now bear his name, but was marooned by his crew, and never heard of further. He had previously, for a time, pa.s.sed into the service of the Dutch, and had guided them to the river named after him, on which New York now stands. The course of English discovery in the north was for a time concluded by the voyage of William Baffin in 1615, which resulted in the discovery of the land named after him, as well as many of the islands to the north of America.

Meanwhile the Dutch had taken part in the work of discovery towards the north. They had revolted against the despotism of Philip II., who was now monarch of both Spain and Portugal. At first they attempted to adopt a route which would not bring them into collision with their old masters; and in three voyages, between 1594 and 1597, William Barentz attempted the North-East Pa.s.sage, under the auspices of the States-General. He discovered Cherry Island, and touched on Spitzbergen, but failed in the main object of his search; and the attention of the Dutch was henceforth directed to seizing the Portuguese route, rather than finding a new one for themselves.

The reason they were able to do this is a curious instance of Nemesis in history. Owing to the careful series of intermarriages planned out by Ferdinand of Arragon, the Portuguese Crown and all its possessions became joined to Spain in 1580 under Philip II., just a year after the northern provinces of the Netherlands had renounced allegiance to Spain. Consequently they were free to attack not alone Spanish vessels and colonies, but also those previously belonging to Portugal. As early as 1596 Cornelius Houtman rounded the Cape and visited Sumatra and Bantam, and within fifty, years the Dutch had replaced the Portuguese in many of their Eastern possessions.

In 1614 they took Malacca, and with it the command of the Spice Islands; by 1658 they had secured full possession of Ceylon. Much earlier, in 1619, they had founded Batavia in Java, which they made the centre of their East Indian possessions, as it still remains.

The English at first attempted to imitate the Dutch in their East Indian policy. The English East India Company was founded by Elizabeth in 1600, and as early as 1619 had forced the Dutch to allow them to take a third share of the profits of the Spice Islands. In order to do this several English planters settled at Amboyna, but within four years trade rivalries had reached such a pitch that the Dutch murdered some of these merchants and drove the rest from the islands.

As a consequence the English Company devoted its attention to the mainland of India itself, where they soon obtained possession of Madras and Bombay, and left the islands of the Indian Ocean mainly in possession of the Dutch. We shall see later the effect of this upon the history of geography, for it was owing to their possession of the East India Islands that the Dutch were practically the discoverers of Australia. One result of the Dutch East India policy has left its traces even to the present day. In 1651 they established a colony at the Cape of Good Hope, which only fell into English hands during the Napoleonic wars, when Napoleon held Holland.

Meanwhile the English had not lost sight of the possibilities of the North-East Pa.s.sage, if not for reaching the Spice Islands, at any rate as a means of tapping the overland route to China, hitherto monopolised by the Genoese. In 1558 an English gentleman, named Anthony Jenkinson, was sent as amba.s.sador to the Czar of Muscovy, and travelled from Moscow as far as Bokhara; but he was not very fortunate in his venture, and England had to be content for some time to receive her Indian and Chinese goods from the Venetian argosies as before. But at last they saw no reason why they should not attempt direct relations with the East. A company of Levant merchants was formed in 1583 to open out direct communications with Aleppo, Bagdad, Ormuz, and Goa. They were unsuccessful at the two latter places owing to the jealousy of the Portuguese, but they made arrangements for cheaper transit of Eastern goods to England, and in 1587 the last of the Venetian argosies, a great vessel of eleven hundred tons, was wrecked off the Isle of Wight.

Henceforth the English conducted their own business with the East, and Venetian and Portuguese monopoly was at an end.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUSSIAN MAP OF ASIA, 1737.]

But the journeys of Chancellor and Jenkinson to the Court of Moscow had more far-reaching effects; the Russians themselves were thereby led to contemplate utilising their proximity to one of the best known routes to the Far East. Shortly after Jenkinson's visit, the Czar, Ivan the Terrible, began extending his dominions eastward, sending at first a number of troops to accompany the Russian merchant Strogonof as far as the Obi in search of sables. Among the troops were a corps of six thousand Cossacks commanded by one named Va.s.sili Yermak, who, finding the Tartars an easy prey, determined at first to set up a new kingdom for himself. In 1579 he was successful in overcoming the Tartars and their chief town Sibir, near Tobolsk; but, finding it difficult to retain his position, determined to return to his allegiance to the Czar on condition of being supported.

This was readily granted, and from that time onward the Russians steadily pushed on through to the unknown country of the north of Asia, since named after the little town conquered by Yermak, of which scarcely any traces now remain. As early as 1639 they had reached the Pacific under Kupilof. A force was sent out from Yakutz, on the Lena, in 1643, which reached the Amur, and thus Russians came for the first time in contact with the Chinese, and a new method of reaching Cathay was thus obtained, while geography gained the knowledge of the extent of Northern Asia. For, about the same time (in 1648), the Arctic Ocean was reached on the north sh.o.r.es of Siberia, and a fleet under the Cossack Dis.h.i.+nef sailed from Kolyma and reached as far as the straits known by the name of Behring. It was not, however, till fifty years afterwards, in 1696, that the Russians reached Kamtschatka.

Notwithstanding the access of knowledge which had been gained by these successive bold pushes towards north and east, it still remained uncertain whether Siberia did not join on to the northern part of the New World discovered by Columbus and Amerigo, and in 1728 Peter the Great sent out an expedition under VITUS BEHRING, a Dane in the Russian service, with the express aim of ascertaining this point.

He reached Kamtschatka, and there built two vessels as directed by the Czar, and started on his voyage northward, coasting along the land. When he reached a little beyond 67 N., he found no land to the north or east, and conceived he had reached the end of the continent. As a matter of fact, he was within thirty miles of the west coast of America; but of this he does not seem to have been aware, being content with solving the special problem put before him by the Czar. The strait thus discovered by Behring, though not known by him to be a strait, has ever since been known by his name.

In 1741, however, Behring again set out on a voyage of discovery to ascertain how far to the east America was, and within a fortnight had come within sight of the lofty mountain named by him Mount St. Elias. Behring himself died upon this voyage, on an island also named after him; he had at last solved the relation between the Old and the New Worlds.

These voyages of Behring, however, belong to a much later stage of discovery than those we have hitherto been treating for the last three chapters. His explorations were undertaken mainly for scientific purposes, and to solve a scientific problem, whereas all the other researches of Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Dutch were directed to one end, that of reaching the Spice Islands and Cathay. The Portuguese at first started out on the search by the slow method of creeping down the coast of Africa; the Spanish, by adopting Columbus's bold idea, had attempted it by the western route, and under Magellan's still bolder conception had equally succeeded in reaching it in that way; the English and French sought for a north-west pa.s.sage to the Moluccas; while the English and Dutch attempted a northeasterly route. In both directions the icy barrier of the north prevented success. It was reserved, as we shall see, for the present century to complete the North-West Pa.s.sage under Maclure, and the North-East by Nordenskiold, sailing with quite different motives to those which first brought the mariners of England, France, and Holland within the Arctic Circle.

The net result of all these attempts by the nations of Europe to wrest from the Venetians the monopoly of the Eastern trade was to add to geography the knowledge of the existence of a New World intervening between the western sh.o.r.es of Europe and the eastern sh.o.r.es of Asia. We have yet to learn the means by which the New World thus discovered became explored and possessed by the European nations.

[_Authorities:_ Cooley and Beazeley, _John and Sebastian Cabot_, 1898.]

CHAPTER IX

THE PARt.i.tION OF AMERICA

We have hitherto been dealing with the discoveries made by Spanish and Portuguese along the coast of the New World, but early in the sixteenth century they began to put foot on _terra firma_ and explore the interior. As early as 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa ascended the highest peak in the range running from the Isthmus of Panama, and saw for the first time by European eyes the great ocean afterwards to be named by Magellan the Pacific. He there heard that the country to the south extended without end, and was inhabited by great nations, with an abundance of gold. Among his companions who heard of this golden country, or El Dorado, was one Francisco Pizarro, who was destined to test the report. But a similar report had reached the ears of Diego Velasquez, governor of Cuba, as to a great nation possessed of much gold to the north of Darien. He accordingly despatched his lieutenant Hernando Cortes in 1519 to investigate, with ten s.h.i.+ps, six hundred and fifty men, and some eighteen horses. When he landed at the port named by him Vera Cruz, the appearance of his men, and more especially of his horses, astonished and alarmed the natives of Mexico, then a large and semi-civilised state under the rule of Montezuma, the last representative of the Aztecs, who in the twelfth century had succeeded the Toltecs, a people that had settled on the Mexican tableland as early probably as the seventh century, introducing the use of metals and roads and many of the elements of civilisation. Montezuma is reported to have been able to range no less than two hundred thousand men under his banners, but he showed his opinion of the Spaniards by sending them costly presents, gold and silver and costly stuffs. This only aroused the cupidity of Cortes, who determined to make a bold stroke for the conquest of such a rich prize. He burnt his s.h.i.+ps and advanced into the interior of the country, conquering on his way the tribe of the Tlascalans, who had been at war with the Mexicans, but, when conquered, were ready to a.s.sist him against them. With their aid he succeeded in seizing the Mexican king, who was forced to yield a huge tribute. After many struggles Cortes found himself master of the capital, and of all the resources of the Mexican Empire (1521). These he hastened to place at the feet of the Emperor Charles V., who appointed him Governor and Captain-General of Mexico.

It is characteristic throughout the history of the New World, that none of the soldiers of fortune who found it such an easy prey ever thought of setting up an empire for himself. This is a testimony to the influence national feeling had upon the minds even of the most lawless, and the result was that Europe and European ideas were brought over into America, or rather the New World became tributary to Europe.

As soon as Cortes had established himself he fitted out expeditions to explore the country, and himself reached Honduras after a remarkable journey for over 1000 miles, in which he was only guided by a map on cotton cloth, on which the Cacique of Tabasco had painted all the towns, rivers, and mountains of the country as far as Nicaragua. He also despatched a small fleet under Alvarro de Saavedra to support a Spanish expedition which had been sent to the Moluccas under Sebastian del Cano, and which arrived at Tidor in 1527, to the astonishment of Spanish and Portuguese alike when they heard he had started from New Castile. In 1536, Cortes, who had been in the meantime shorn of much of his power, conducted an expedition by sea along the north-west coast of Mexico, and reached what he considered to be a great island. He identified this with an imaginary island in the Far East, near the terrestrial paradise to which the name of California had been given in a contemporary romance.

Thus, owing to Cortes, almost the whole of Central America had become known before his death in 1540. Similarly, at a much earlier period, Ponce de Leon had thought he had discovered another great island in Florida in 1512, whither he had gone in search of Bayuca, a fabled island of the Indians, in which they stated was a fountain of eternal youth. At the time of Cortes' first attempt on Mexico, Pineda had coasted round Florida, and connected it with the rest of the coast of Mexico, which he traversed as far as Vera Cruz.

The exploits of Cortes were all important in their effects. He had proved with what ease a handful of men might overcome an empire and gain unparalleled riches. Francisco Pizarro was encouraged by the success of Cortes to attempt the discovery of the El Dorado he had heard of when on Balboa's expedition. With a companion named Diego de Almegro he made several coasting expeditions down the northwest coast of South America, during which they heard of the empire of the Incas on the plateau of Peru. They also obtained sufficient gold and silver to raise their hopes of the riches of the country, and returned to Spain to report to the Emperor. Pizarro obtained permission from Charles V. to attempt the conquest of Peru, of which he was named Governor and Captain-General, on condition of paying a tribute of one-fifth of the treasure he might obtain. He started in February 1531 with a small force of 180 men, of whom thirty-six were hors.e.m.e.n. Adopting the policy of Cortes, he pushed directly for the capital Cuzco, where they managed to seize Atahualpa, the Inca of the time. He attempted to ransom himself by agreeing to fill the room in which he was confined, twenty-two feet long by sixteen wide, with bars of gold as high as the hand could reach.

He carried out this prodigious promise, and Pizarro's companions found themselves in possession of booty equal to three millions sterling.

Atahualpa was, however, not released, but condemned to death on a frivolous pretext, while Pizarro dismissed his followers, fully confident that the wealth they carried off would attract as many men as he could desire to El Dorado. He settled himself at Lima, near the coast, in 1534. Meanwhile Almegro had been despatched south, and made himself master of Chili. Another expedition in 1539 was conducted by Pizarro's brother Gonzales across the Andes, and reached the sources of the Amazon, which one of his companions, Francisco de Orellana, traversed as far as the mouth. This he reached in August 1541, after a voyage of one thousand leagues. The river was named after Orellana, but, from reports he made of the existence of a tribe of female warriors, was afterwards known as the river of the Amazons. The author spread reports of another El Dorado to the north, in which the roofs of the temples were covered with gold. This report afterwards led to the disastrous expedition of Sir Walter Raleigh to Guiana. By his voyage Orellana connected the Spanish and Portuguese "spheres of influence" in the New World of Amerigo. By the year 1540 the main outlines of Central and South America and something of the interior had been made known by the Spanish adventurers within half a century of Columbus' first voyage.

Owing to the papal bull Portugal possessed Brazil, but all the rest of the huge stretch of country was claimed for Spain. The Portuguese wisely treated Brazil as an outlet for their overflowing population, which settled there in large numbers and established plantations. The Spaniards, on the other hand, only regarded their huge possessions as exclusive markets to be merely visited by them.

Rich mines of gold, silver, and mercury were discovered in Mexico and Peru, especially in the far-famed mines of Potosi, and these were exploited entirely in the interests of Spain, which acted as a sieve by which the precious metals were poured into Europe, raising prices throughout the Old World. In return European merchandise was sent in the return voyages of the Spanish galleons to New Spain, which could only buy Flemish cloth, for example, through Spanish intermediaries, who raised its price to three times the original cost. This short-sighted policy on the part of Spain naturally encouraged smuggling, and attracted the s.h.i.+ps of all nations towards that pursuit.

We have already seen the first attempts of the French and English in the exploration of the north-east coast of North America; but during the sixteenth century very little was done to settle on such inhospitable sh.o.r.es, which did not offer anything like the rich prizes that Tropical America afforded. Neither the exploration of Cartier in 1534, or that of the Cabots much earlier, was followed by any attempt to possess the land. Breton fishermen visited the fisheries off Newfoundland, and various explorers attempted to find openings which would give them a north-west pa.s.sage, but otherwise the more northerly part of the continent was left unoccupied till the beginning of the seventeenth century. The first town founded was that of St. Augustine, in Florida, in 1565, but this was destroyed three years later by a French expedition. Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to found a colony in 1584 near where Virginia now stands, but it failed after three years, and it was not till the reign of James I. that an organised attempt was made by England to establish plantations, as they were then called, on the North American coast.

Two Chartered Companies, the one to the north named the Plymouth Company, and the one to the south named the London Company (both founded in 1606), nominally divided between them all the coast from Nova Scotia to Florida. These large tracts of country were during the seventeenth century slowly parcelled out into smaller states, mainly Puritan in the north (New England), High Church and Catholic in the south (Virginia and Maryland). But between the two, and on the banks of the Hudson and the Delaware, two other European nations had also formed plantations--the Dutch along the Hudson from 1609 forming the New Netherlands, and the Swedes from 1636 along the Delaware forming New Sweden. The latter, however, lasted only a few years, and was absorbed by the Dutch in 1655.

The capital of New Netherlands was established on Manhattan Island, to the south of the palisade still known as Wall Street, and the city was named New Amsterdam. The Hudson is such an important artery of commerce between the Atlantic and the great lakes, that this wedge between the two sets of English colonies would have been a bar to any future progress. This was recognised by Charles II., who in 1664 despatched an expedition to demand its surrender, even though England and Holland were at that time at peace. New Amsterdam was taken, and named New York, after the king's brother, the Duke of York, afterwards James II. New Sweden, which at the same time fell into the English hands, was sold as a proprietary plantation to a Jersey man, Sir George Carteret, and to a Quaker, William Penn. By this somewhat high-handed procedure the whole coast-line down to Florida was in English hands.

Both the London and Plymouth Companies had started to form plantations in 1607, and in that very year the French made their first effective settlements in America, at Port Royal and at Nova Scotia, then called Arcadie; while, the following year, Samuel de Champlain made settlements at Quebec, and founded French Canada. He explored the lake country, and established settlements down the banks of the St. Lawrence, along which French activity for a long time confined itself. Between the French and the English settlements roved the warlike Five Nations of the Iroquois Indians, and Champlain, whose settlements were in the country of the Algonquins, was obliged to take their part and make the Iroquois the enemies of France, which had important effects upon the final struggle between England and France in the eighteenth century. The French continued their exploration of the interior of the continent. In 1673 Marquette discovered the Mississippi (Missi Sepe, "the great water"), and descended it as far as the mouth of the Arkansas, but the work of exploring the Mississippi valley was undertaken by Robert de la Salle. He had already discovered the Ohio and Illinois rivers, and in three expeditions, between 1680 and 1682, succeeded in working his way right down to the mouth of the Mississippi, giving to the huge tract of country which he had thus traversed the name of Louisiana, after Louis XIV.

France thenceforth claimed the whole _hinterland_, as we should now call it, of North America, the English being confined to the comparatively narrow strip of country east of the Alleghanies. New Orleans was founded at the mouth of the Mississippi in 1716, and named after the Prince Regent; and French activity ranged between Quebec and New Orleans, leaving many traces even to the present day, in French names like Mobile, Detroit, and the like, through the intervening country. The situation at the commencement of the eighteenth century was remarkably similar to that of the Gold Coast in Africa at the end of the nineteenth. The French persistently attempted to encroach upon the English sphere of influence, and it was in attempting to define the two spheres that George Was.h.i.+ngton learned his first lesson in diplomacy and strategy. The French and English American colonies were almost perpetually at war with one another, the objective being the spot where Pittsburg now stands, which was regarded as the gate of the west, overlooking as it did the valley of the Ohio. Here Duquesne founded the fort named after himself, and it was not till 1758 that this was finally wrested from French hands; while, in the following year, Wolfe, by his capture of Quebec, overthrew the whole French power in North America.

Throughout the long fight the English had been much a.s.sisted by the guerilla warfare of the Iroquois against the French.

By the Treaty of Paris in 1763 the whole of French America was ceded to England, which also obtained possession of Florida from Spain, in exchange for the Philippines, captured during the war.

As a compensation all the country west of the Mississippi became joined on to the Spanish possessions in Mexico. These of course became, nominally French when Napoleon's brother Joseph was placed on the Spanish throne, but Napoleon sold them to the United States in 1803, so that no barrier existed to the westward spread of the States. Long previously to this, a Chartered Company had been formed in 1670, with Prince Rupert at its head, to trade with the Indians for furs in Hudson's Bay, then and for some time afterwards called Rupertsland. The Hudson Bay Company gradually extended its knowledge of the northerly parts of America towards the Rocky Mountains, but it was not till 1740 that Varenne de la Varanderye discovered their extent. In 1769-71 a fur trader named Hearne traced the river Coppermine to the sea, while it was not till 1793 that Mr. (after Sir A.) Mackenzie discovered the river now named after him, and crossed the continent of North America from Atlantic to Pacific.

One of the reasons for this late exploration of the north-west of North America was a geographical myth started by a Spanish voyager named Juan de Fuca as early as 1592. Coasting as far as Vancouver Island, he entered the inlet to the south of it, and not being able to see land to the north, brought back a report of a huge sea spreading over all that part of the country, which most geographers a.s.sumed to pa.s.s over into Hudson Bay or the neighbourhood. It was this report as much as anything which encouraged hopes of finding the north-west pa.s.sage in a lat.i.tude low enough to be free from ice.

As soon as the United States got possession of the land west of the Mississippi they began to explore it, and between 1804 and 1807 Lewis and Clarke had explored the whole basin of the Missouri, while Pike had investigated the country between the sources of the Mississippi and the Red River. We have already seen that Behring had carried over Russian investigation and dominion into Alaska, and it was in order to avoid her encroachments down towards the Californian coast that President Monroe put forth in 1823 the doctrine that no further colonisation of the Americas would be permitted by the United States. In this year Russia agreed to limit her claims to the country north of 54.40. The States subsequently acquired California and other adjoining states during their war with Mexico in 1848, just before gold was discovered in the Sacramento valley.

The land between California and Alaska was held in joint possession between Great Britain and the States, and was known as the Oregon Territory. Lewis and Clarke had explored the Columbia River, while Vancouver had much earlier examined the island which now bears his name, so that both countries appear to have some rights of discovery to the district. At one time the inhabitants of the States were inclined to claim all the country as far as the Russian boundary 54.40, and a war-cry arose "54.40 or fight;" but in 1846 the territory was divided by the 49th parallel, and at this date we may say the part.i.tion of America was complete, and all that remained to be known of it was the ice-bound northern coast, over which so much heroic enterprise has been displayed.

The history of geographical discovery in America is thus in large measure a history of conquest. Men got to know both coast-line and interior while endeavouring either to trade or to settle where nature was propitious, or the country afforded mineral or vegetable wealth that could be easily transported. Of the coast early knowledge was acquired for geography; but where the continent broadens out either north or south, making the interior inaccessible for trade purposes with the coasts, ignorance remained even down to the present century. Even to the present day the country south of the valley of the Amazon is perhaps as little known as any portion of the earth's surface, while, as we have seen, it was not till the early years of this century that any knowledge was acquired of the huge tract of country between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains.

It was the natural expansion of the United States, rendered possible by the cession of this tract to the States by Napoleon in 1803, that brought it within the knowledge of all. That expansion was chiefly due to the improved methods of communication which steam has given to mankind only within this century. But for this the region east of the Rocky Mountains would possibly be as little known to Europeans, even at the present day, as the Soudan or Somaliland. It is owing to this natural expansion of the States, and in minor measure of Canada, that few great names of geographical explorers are connected with our knowledge of the interior of North America. Unknown settlers have been the pioneers of geography, and not as elsewhere has the reverse been the case. In the two other continents whose geographical history we have still to trace, Australia and Africa, explorers have preceded settlers or conquerors, and we can generally follow the course of geographical discovery in their case without the necessity of discussing their political history.

[_Authorities:_ Winsor, _From Cartier to Frontenac_; Gelcich, in _Mittheilungen_ of Geographical Society of Vienna, 1892.]

CHAPTER X

AUSTRALIA AND THE SOUTH SEAS--TASMAN AND COOK

If one looks at the west coast of Australia one is struck by the large number of Dutch names which are jotted down the coast. There is Hoog Island, Diemen's Bay, Houtman's Abrolhos, De Wit land, and the Archipelago of Nuyts, besides Dirk Hartog's Island and Cape Leeuwin. To the extreme north we find the Gulf of Carpentaria, and to the extreme south the island which used to be called Van Diemen's Land. It is not altogether to be wondered at that almost to the middle of this century the land we now call Australia was tolerably well known as New Holland. If the Dutch had struck the more fertile eastern sh.o.r.es of the Australian continent, it might have been called with reason New Holland to the present day; but there is scarcely any long coast-line of the world so inhospitable and so little promising as that of Western Australia, and one can easily understand how the Dutch, though they explored it, did not care to take possession of it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TERRES AUSTRALES. d'apres d'Anville. 1746.]

But though the Dutch were the first to explore any considerable stretch of Australian coast, they were by no means the first to sight it. As early as 1542 a Spanish expedition under Luis Lopez de Villalobos, was despatched to follow up the discoveries of Magellan in the Pacific Ocean within the Spanish sphere of influence. He discovered several of the islands of Polynesia, and attempted to seize the Philippines, but his fleet had to return to New Spain.

One of the s.h.i.+ps coasted along an island to which was given the name of New Guinea, and was thought to be part of the great unknown southern land which Ptolemy had imagined to exist in the south of the Indian Ocean, and to be connected in some way with Tierra del Fuego. Curiosity was thus aroused, and in 1606 Pedro de Quiros was despatched on a voyage to the South Seas with three s.h.i.+ps.

He discovered the New Hebrides, and believed it formed part of the southern continent, and he therefore named it Australia del Espiritu Santo, and hastened home to obtain the viceroyalty of this new possession. One of his s.h.i.+ps got separated from him, and the commander, Luys Vaz de Torres, sailed farther to the south-west, and thereby learned that the New Australia was not a continent but an island. He proceeded farther till he came to New Guinea, which he coasted along the south coast, and seeing land to the south of him, he thus pa.s.sed through the straits since named after him, and was probably the first European to see the continent of Australia.

In the very same year (1606) the Dutch yacht named the _Duyfken_ is said to have coasted along the south and west coasts of New Guinea nearly a thousand miles, till they reached Cape Keerweer, or "turn again." This was probably the north-west coast of Australia. In the first thirty years of the seventeenth century the Dutch followed the west coast of Australia with as much industry as the Portuguese had done with the west coast of Africa, leaving up to the present day signs of their explorations in the names of islands, bays, and capes. Dirk Hartog, in the _Endraaght_, discovered that Land which is named after his s.h.i.+p, and the cape and roadstead named after himself, in 1616. Jan Edels left his name upon the western coast in 1619; while, three years later, a s.h.i.+p named the _Lioness_ or _Leeuwin_ reached the most western point of the continent, to which its name is still attached. Five years later, in 1627, De Nuyts coasted round the south coast of Australia; while in the same year a Dutch commander named Carpenter discovered and gave his name to the immense indentation still known as the Gulf of Carpentaria.