INTRODUCTORY 



coveries in the thirty years from 1492 to 1522 doubled at a 

 single bound all that was previously known of the surface 

 of the earth, and added a hemisphere to the chart of the 

 world. . . . Columbus, Gama, Magellan, America, the 

 route to India, the circumnavigation of the globe ; three 

 men and three facts opened gloriously a new era of history, 

 of geography, and especially of oceanography." (See the 

 group bracketed together in the middle of the following state- 

 ment of a few important ancient and modern approximate 

 dates) : — 



Age of Homer (and voyage of the " Argo " ?) 

 Map of Hecataeus 

 Voyage of Pytheas . 

 Map of Dicsearchus . 

 Map of Ptolemy 



/Bartholomew Diaz 



J Col\imibus 



J Vasco da Gama 



l^Magellan 

 James Cook 

 James C. Ross . 

 " Challenger " Expedition 



about 1000 B.C. 



about 500 B.C. 



fourth century B.C. 



about 300 B.C. 



150 A.D. 



1486 A.D. 

 1492 A.D. 

 1497 A.D. 

 1521 A.D. 

 1772 A.D, 

 1840 A.D. 

 1872 A.D. 



We now come upon a period of comparative inactivity, 

 from the early sixteenth to the late eighteenth century when 

 Captain James Cook (1728-1779), that truly scientific naviga- 

 tor, sent to the South Pacific on a Transit of Venus Expedition 

 in 1769, with Sir Joseph Banks as naturalist, subsequently 

 in 1772 circumnavigated the South Sea about latitude 60°, 

 and finally disproved the existence of a great southern 

 continent. He sailed round New Zealand, rediscovered 

 Australia and annexed it to Great Britain, incidentally 

 making known to science that strange animal the kangaroo. 

 He discovered innumerable islands in the Pacific, such as 

 New Caledonia and the Sandwich group, where he was killed 

 by the natives in 1779. 



Thus, in this brief story of the growth of knowledge of 

 the oceans, we have first the ancient explorers and writers up 

 to the time of Ptolemy (about 150 a. c), then the great age 



