2 HISTORY OF THE [BOOK r. 



oceans were anciently distinguished also, from theii 

 relative situation, by the names of the North and 

 South Seas.* 



To that prodigious chain of islands which extend in 

 a curve from the Florida shore on the northern pe- 

 ninsula to the gulph of Venezuela in the southern, 

 is given the denomination of West Indies, from the 

 name of India originally assigned to them by Colum- 

 bus. This illustrious navigator planned his expedi- 

 tion, not, as Raynal and others have supposed, under 

 the idea of introducing a new world to the knowledge 



O o 



of the old ; but, principally, in the view of finding a 

 route to India by a western navigation ; which he was 

 led to think would prove less tedious than by the coast 

 of Africa: and this conclusion would have been just, 

 if the geography of jhe ancients, on which it was 

 founded, had been accurate.-)- Indeed, so firmly per- 



* The appellation of North, applied to that part of the Atlantic which 

 flows into the gulph of Darien, seems now to be entirely disused; but 

 the Pacific is still commonly called the South sea. It was discovered in 



f " The spherical figure of the earth was known to the ancient geo- 

 graphers. They invented the method still in use, of computing the lon- 

 gitude and latitude of different'places. According to their dolrine, the 

 equator contained 360 degrees j these they divided into twenty-four parts, 

 or hours, each equal to fifteen degrees. The country of the Seres or Sinae 

 being the farthest part of India known to the ancients, was supposed, by 

 Marinus Tyrius, the most eminent of the ancient geographers before 

 Ptolemy, to be fifteen hours, or 225 degrees to the east of the first meri- 

 dian, passing through the Fortunate Islands. If this supposition was 

 well founded, the country of the Seres, or China, was only nine hours, 

 or 135 degrees west from the Fortunate or Canary islands; and the navi- 

 gation in that direftion was much shorter than by the coarse which the 



