104 LECTURES, 



how to represent them. Some thought that they must be two broad 

 peninsulas shooting out far towards the east from the body of the 

 Asiatic hemisphere. But the greater part, who with justice supposed, 

 or who soon learned, that the eastern shore of Asia must still be far 

 distant, imagined them to be two isolated pieces of land in the midst 

 of the ocean. And they represented them, accordingly, as two great 

 roughly shaped islands, more or less advancing from the Antillian 

 centre towards the south and the north. 



When the Balbaos and Corteses had reached the long isthmus 

 countries of Mexico and Central America, those two islands at length 

 coalesced, and we see them on the subsequent maps linked to each 

 other by a natural bridge of mountains and continental shores. 



Noio, the huge bulk of the American block began to show some- 

 thing of its true proportions. At leasr, this was the case on its east- 

 ern side, which lay towards Europe, and with which the first European 

 navigators soon became tolerably well acquainted, whilst the western 

 side still remained untouched and hidden in darkness. On the maps 

 of this period, America looks like one of the gigantic statues of gods 

 or kings which we see carved in high relief in the rock-temples of 

 Hindostan and Egypt. Their front parts, turned towards us, are toler- 

 ably well drawn and sculptured, but their backs still adhere to and 

 form a portion of the shapeless mountain side. 



After Magellan had pierced through his strait into the open water 

 to the west, when Pizarro had worked his laborious Avay down the 

 coast of Peru, and when Cortes in the latter part of his career, in 

 search of something like Japan or China, had navigated to the north- 

 west and explored the shores of California, then, likewise, this western 

 side was cut loose from the mass of the unknown, and began to assume 

 at least the principal features of its true configuration. 



But even these principal features were as yet only rudely given. A 

 mariner who would sail by those sketches must be on his guard, and 

 be prepared to touch at the port of his destination some degrees 

 earlier or later than his charts would lead him to expect. On them 

 are projections and excrescences which ought not to be there ; inlets 

 and bays appear where in reality everything is filled up with vol- 

 canic matter and diluvial deposits ; and large islands, as for instance. 

 Newfoundland, are still attached to the whole continent. The ex- 

 treme north and south of the continent, where no one has yet ven- 

 tured to sail, are still for a long while left to fancy and speculation. 



In the north, these speculations assumed particularly numerous 

 and varied forms. On some of the maps of the middle of the 16th 

 century we see a long continental bridge or archway built from Scandi- 

 navia to Greenland, and this part of America thus attached to Europe. 

 On others this same Greenland, and with it the entire arctic regions 

 of America as far down as Newfoundland and Mexico, are annexed to 

 Asia, and are represented as a prolongation of Northern China or 

 Tar,tary. Very slowly and reluctantly the constructors of these maps 

 surrendered their preconceived notion, that Mexico was the next 

 neighbor of Japan, Shanghai, and Canton. However, every 20 or 

 30 years, Japan retreated a little further towards the west. Every 

 half century the broad gulf in the Northern Pacific widened, a little 



