38 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the coast of North America to the sixty-seventh parallel of north lati- 

 tude; and Magellan's vessel the Vittoria, after sailing around the 

 world, hud returned in 1522 to San Lucar, in Spain, the port whence 

 she set out. 



The century that followed this period of discovery was occupied 

 with the more particular exploration and settlement of the regions 

 thus brought to the knowledge of mankind, and with the labors of 

 geographers and cartographers in arranging the great mass of new 

 materials into a reconstructed system of geography. With the ex- 

 ception of fruitless efforts to discover, in the interest of commerce, a 

 northeast or a northwest passage to the Indies around the northern 

 part of the globe, or directly across the pole, the zeal for geographi- 

 cal discovery abated through the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- 

 ries ; the world being sufficiently occupied with what it had already 

 acquired, either in building up great empires in the newly-diseovered 

 continents of North and South America, or by extending the rule of 

 maritime nations over the coast of Africa, and the remoter parts of 

 Asia, as in the settlement of the colonies established by the Portu- 

 guese, and by the British conquest of India. In fact, so large a por- 

 tion of the earth's surface had become known within so short a period, 

 that it presented enough to absorb all the activity of civilized nations 

 for three centuries in the work of colonization, settlement, or con- 

 quest. 



It was not until near the middle of the nineteenth century when 

 this great work had produced its results in the establishment of such 

 nations as the United States, Mexico, the republics of Central Amer- 

 ica, Brazil, the other states of South America, and of a vast dominion 

 under British rule in India r and by the extension of Russia over a 

 large part of Northern Asia, that the attention of mankind was again 

 drawn to the yet undiscovered or imperfectly known portions of the 

 earth, and a new interest aw 7 akened in geographical exploration and 

 discovery. This may be said to have begun with the founding of a 

 Geographical Society in Paris, in 1821 ; of another in Berlin, in 1S28, 

 and the establishment of the Royal Geographical Society of London, 

 in 1830. These societies were formed to cultivate the science of 

 geography in a more comprehensive spirit, to facilitate the acquisi- 

 tion of geographical information by the establishment of libraries, to 

 disseminate it by publications, and to encourage and assist scientific 

 travelers and explorers. Like all new things, however, it was some 

 years before these societies produced any effect, or the w r orld recog- 

 nized the value of the purpose for which they were established; 

 whereas the results which have since been brought about, chiefly 

 through the instrumentality of such institutions, are beyond anything 

 which the most sanguine of their projectors could have anticipated. 



The Royal Geographical Society of London may be taken as an 

 illustration of these societies. It has now 3,035 fellows, each paying 



