OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 259 



ing men to a clearer insight into the connection of phenomena. 

 On entering into a serious consideration of the original works 

 of the earliest writers of the history of the Conquista, we are 

 surprised so frequently to discover the germ of important phys- 

 ical truths in the Spanish writers of the sixteenth century. 

 At the sight of a continent in the vast waste of waters which 

 appeared separated from all other regions in creation, there 

 presented themselves to the excited curiosity, both of the ear- 

 liest travelers themselves and of those who collected their nar- 

 ratives, many of the most important questions which occupy 

 us in the present day. Among these were questions regarding 

 the unity of the human race, and its varieties from one com- 

 mon original type ; the migrations of nations, and the affinity 

 of languages, which frequently manifest greater differences in 

 their radical words than in their inflections or grammatical 

 forms ; the possibility of the migration of certain species of 

 plants and animals ; the cause of the trade winds, and of the 

 constant oceanic currents ; the regular decrease of tempera- 

 ture on the declivities of the Cordilleras, and in the superim- 

 posed strata of water in the depths of the ocean ; and the re- 

 ciprocal action of the volcanoes occurring in chains, and their 

 influence on the frequency of earthquakes, and on the extent 

 of circles of commotion. The ground-work of what we at 

 present term physical geography, independently of mathemat- 

 ical considerations, is contained in the Jesuit Joseph Acosta's 

 work, entitled Histwia natural y moral de las Indias, and 

 in the work by Gonzalo Hernandez de Oviedo, which appear- 

 ed hardly twenty years after the death of Columbus. At no 

 other period since the origin of society had the sphere of ideas 

 been so suddenly and so wonderfully enlarged in reference to 

 the external world and geographical relations ; never had the 

 desire of observing nature at different latitudes and at different 

 elevations above the sea's level, and of multiplying the means 

 by which its phenomena might be investigated, been more 

 powerfully felt. 



We might, perhaps, as I have already elsewhere remark- 

 ed,* be led to adopt the erroneous idea that the value of these 

 great discoveries, each one of which reciprocally led to others, 

 and the importance of these two-fold conquests in the physical 

 and the intellectual world, would not have been duly appre- 

 ciated before our own age, in which the history of civilization 

 has happily been subjected to a philosophical mode of treat- 

 ment. Such an assumption is, however, refuted by the cotem- 

 * Examen Crit., t. i., p. 3-6 and 290. 



