ASIA. 



ASIA. 



666 



navigation of Africa. The parts of Asia which had been visited by 

 the Greeks were so far known as to their boundaries, extent, and 

 principal features, that they could be laid down with a tolerable degree 

 of exactness. This will be evident to any person who examines 

 Ptolemaeus's map of the extensive region between the Mediterranean, 

 the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea, the Belur-Tagh, and the river Indus, 

 though it is also clear that the vague information which this geo- 

 grapher^had obtained respecting India betrayed him into very great 

 errors as to that country. The information acquired by the travellers 

 of the middle ages was much less exact. None of them had deter- 

 mined the astronomical position of any place, but as they and especially 

 Marco Polo had noticed the immense extent of the countries which 

 they had traversed, a very erroneous idea was formed of their true 

 position on the globe. Thus we find that the German astronomer and 

 geographer Martin Behaim, who in 1484 and 1485 accompanied the 

 Portuguese navigator Diego Cam in his voyage of discovery along the 

 coarts of Guinea, and hi 1492 made in his native place Niirnberg a 

 terrestrial globe, has placed the Zipangu of Marco Polo, or the present 

 Japan, it no great distance to the west of the islands of Cape Verde. 

 A few years were sufficient to remove this error. But even later 

 geographers, as Sim. Grynacus, Sebastian Munster, and others, in 

 their ' Typus Cosmographicus Universalis,' drawn up in the first 

 quarter of the 16th century, laid down the same country at a short 

 distance to the west of the Terra di Cuba and Farias in America, 

 which had been discovered a few years before. It was only by the 

 discoveries of the Portuguese subsequent to the circumnavigation of 

 the Cape of Good Hope that such errors were removed, and the true 

 l>oBitiou and extent of these countries of Eastern Asia ascertained. 



Vasco de Garna arrived in 1498 at Calicut on the coast of 

 Malabar, and the Portuguese pushed their discoveries in these seas 

 with such activity and zeal that in the course of less than half a 

 century they had explored them as far as Japan. Their first efforts 

 to establish a commerce were directed to the coast of Malabar ; and 

 as the Arabs or Moors who then carried on a very active trade with 

 these countries tried every means to exclude them from these parts, 

 and to embroil them with the numerous sovereigns among which this 

 coast was divided, they were soon obliged to have recourse to arms, 

 and to enter into alliance with some of the native powers. In a few 

 years they had acquired a complete knowledge of the whole coast from 

 (Jape Comorin to the bay of Cambay and its rich emporiums, Surat and 

 Broach or Baroach ; and as early as 1509 they made several settle- 

 ments on the southern coast of Guzerat as far as Diu, which then had 

 a considerable commerce with Persia and Arabia, and they erected 

 on this coast some fortresses. The following year Alfouso Albu- 

 querque took from the Mohammedan monarch of Deccan the famous 

 town of Goa, which soon became the centre of all the Portuguese 

 dominions in India and the seat of the viceroy and colonial govern- 

 ment. The Portuguese now made advantageous treaties with the 

 petty sovereigns along the whole coast of Malabar. But before this 

 time the neighbouring island of Ceylon had been discovered by 

 Almeida in 1506, which was at that epoch of the greatest commercial 

 importance, being a station for the Arabian vessels which went to 

 the Spice Islands for spices ; these, togethy with the cinnamon 

 which grows in Ceylon, they exported to the harbours in the Persian 

 and Arabian gulfs, and thence to Europe. In 1517 the Portuguese 

 erected the fortress of Colombo in Ceylon, and began to exercise a 

 dominion over its petty sovereigns. To secure the monopoly of 

 India they tried to exclude Arabian vessels from the Indian sea, and 

 succeeded partly by the conquest of Ormuz at the entrance of the 

 Persian Gulf, and by their superiority in naval force. 



While the Portuguese were struggling to obtain the commerce of 

 the Red Sea, they also extended their discoveries and conquests 

 farther to the east. The town of Malacca soon attracted their 

 attention. It was then what Singapore at present is, the resort of 

 all the nations of Eastern Asia and the Islands ; its harbour was con- 

 tinually visited by vessels from Malabar, Bengal, Siam, China, the 

 Philippine Islands, the Moluccas, and the Sunda Islands. Albu 

 querque took it in 1511, and the discoveries and the navigation of the 

 Portuguese were speedily extended in all directions. Now for the 

 first time they entered the gulf of Bengal, and became acquainted 

 with the coasts and harbours of Coromandel, Orissa, and Bengal. 

 .John de Silveira in 1518 visited the town of Chittagong, from which 

 the finest cotton manufactures, silk, ginger, indigo, and sugar were 

 exported. The coasts of the peninsula beyond the Ganges were 

 likewise explored, and some knowledge was obtained of the kingdoms 

 of Aracan, Pcju, Ava, Siam, Camboja, and Cochin China. But the 

 Portuguese directed their attention chiefly to the islands. From 

 Sumatra, which was divided into upwards of 20 kingdoms, they 

 obtainr 1 gold, tin, pepper, sandal-wood, camphor, &c. They visited 

 Java in 1513, and Borneo in 1523. The innumerable islands scat- 

 tered over the Indian seas which thus became known, led the 

 Portuguese historian De Barros to set them down as a separate great 

 division of the globe, calling it by the significant name of Polynesia. 

 The extreme boundary of the Portuguese discoveries was the large 

 inland which they called New Guinea, on account of the resemblance 

 of ita inhabitants, the Papuas, to the negroes of Guinea on the 

 African coast. In this navigation they successively became acquainted 

 with Celebes, Sulu, Magindauao, Luzon, or Manilla, and the Moluccas 



or Spice Islands, and even visited the Liquejo, Liew-kiew, or Loo 

 Choo Islands, which are described as rich in gold, and whose vessels 

 visited the harbour of Malacca. 



In 1516 the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Perez arrived at the 

 coast of China, in the gulf of Canton, but the Portuguese were not 

 permitted to enter the harbour and to trade there. They were 

 consequently obliged to confine their commercial intercourse with 

 this empire to a trade with the inhabitants of the island of Hainan 

 and the adjacent coast, till in 1557 they found means to ingratiate 

 themselves with the Chinese government by being materially instru- 

 mental in the destruction of a pirate, who for a long time had 

 ravaged the shores and adjacent islands of southern China. For 

 this valuable assistance' they obtained the desert island of Macao, 

 where they soon made a settlement ; and as on the change of dynasty 

 in the 17th century they were so fortunate as to declare in favour 

 of the party which in the 'end proved victorious against the then 

 established government, the possession of Macao was confirmed to them. 



While the Portuguese were still carrying on their coasting trade 

 with China, one of their navigators, De Mota, was cast by a storm 

 in 1542 on the coast of Nipon, one of the islands which compose 

 Japan, the Zipangu of Marco Polo. The Portuguese were treated 

 with great hospitality, and for some time carried on a very lucrative 

 commerce. Japan was the most eastern limit of their discoveries, by 

 which Europeans became acquainted with the real extent of Asia, 

 and with a great part of its coast. Had the Portuguese only been 

 merchants, the advantages accruing from the commerce with such 

 rich countries would probably have induced them to conceal their 

 discoveries from the commercial nations of Europe ; but they entered 

 the Indian seas as conquerors also, and their historians, Barros, Couto, 

 Barbessa, Faria y Souse, &c., found in their heroic enterprises a 

 subject for national exultation. 



The Portuguese had exhausted their strength in forming settle- 

 ments both in the Old and the New World. The spirit of the first 

 conquerors no longer animated the nation, and then- tyranny and 

 intolerance made them hated in their colonies. At the close of the 

 16th century Portugal fell under the yoke of Spain ; and one result 

 of the struggle of the Netherlands against the power of Philip II. 

 was the gradual transfer of the Portuguese possessions in the East to 

 the hands of the Hollanders, their successful rivals on the sea. The 

 Portuguese were expelled from Japan (1639) and the Moluccas ; they 

 lost Malacca (1641) and Ceylon (1656), with their settlements on the 

 Coromandel and Malabar coasts ; and they remained at the conclusion 

 of peace (1 663) only in the possession of Goa and Diu, which they 

 have kept to the present day. The Hollanders, though they extended 

 the settlements during the century that they possessed the dominion 

 of the Indian seas, acted more on mercantile principles, and did not 

 materially increase our geographical knowledge of the countries in 

 which they settled. They published indeed a few descriptions of 

 some of their colonies and their natural productions, especially of 

 the plants and shells (Rumphius, ' Amboinische Raritatenkammer ; ' 

 Rheede, ' Hortus Malabaricus ; ' Fr. Valentyn's ' Beschreibungen," 

 &c.) ; but these works were generally defective in geographical infor- 

 mation. The most important communication belonging to this period 

 was furnished by the German naturalist E. Kiimpfer who in the 

 capacity of Dutch physician resided in Japan from 1684 to 1692, and 

 has given a good description of that country. 



During the long-protracted contest between the Portuguese and 

 Dutch hi the seas of India, the most northern part of Asia which 

 had not been known either to the ancients or moderns suddenly 

 emerged from the obscurity in which it had hitherto been involved. 

 The sovereigns of Russia, who for more than two centuries had been 

 dependent on the Tartarian princes of the family of Gengis-Khan, 

 obtained the full sovereignty of their country in 1461, and in the 

 following century they extended their dominion and with it our 

 geographical knowledge over the countries drained by the Don, 

 Volga, and Ural, up to the Ural Mountains, by the conquest of Kasan 

 (1552) and Astrakhan (1555). In 1578 a chief, or hetinan, of the 

 Cossacks, Yermak Timofeyekf, who was in fear of punishment for 

 having robbed some travellers, crossed the Ural range with a troop of 

 his countrymen, and entered Siberia. The discovery of Siberia, and 

 its subjection to the Russian sway, were pursued with such vigour 

 that in 1644 the mouth of the Amur was reached, and in 1648 the 

 bold hetman Deshnef, favoured by a mild season, circumnavigated the 

 most north-east corner of Asia, from the mouth of the Kolyma round 

 the north-east cape to the mouth of the Anadyr, and thus proved that 

 Asia was actually separated by an open sea from America. This 

 fact however remained for a length of time problematical ; the 

 Russian navigator Behring (1725-1728), as well as Captain Cook 

 (1778), found their way impeded by enormous fields of ice. In 1820- 

 1824 the Russian captain Wrangel again succeeded in effecting this 

 circumnavigation. The discovery and conquest of Siberia were 

 completed by Peter the Great, who took possession of Kamtchatka 

 in 1696. 



Somewhat later, and still more unexpectedly, Europe obtained a 

 complete geographical view of the immense empire of China, and a 

 considerable part of Central Asia. This was not due to conquest, 

 nor to the activity and industry of travellers, but to science. The 

 Jesuits had tried to convert the inhabitants of Japan to Christianity, 



