264 COSMOS. 



the Arabian and Jewish physicians, and through the account 

 of Rubruquis and the Italian travelers, he also examined with 

 the greatest attention the roots, fruits, and leaves of the differ- 

 ent plants. In drawing attention to the influence exercised 

 by this great age of nautical discoverers on the extension of 

 natural views, we impart more animation to our descriptions, 

 by associating them with the individuality of one great man. 

 In the journal of his voyage, and in his reports, which were 

 first published from 1825 to 1829, we find almost all those 

 circumstances touched upon to which scientific enterprise was 

 directed in the latter half of the fifteenth and throughout the 

 whole of the sixteenth centuries. 



We need only revert generally and cursorily to the exten- 

 sion imparted to the geography of Western nations from the 

 period when the Infante Dom Henrique the navigator, at his 

 country seat of Ter9a Naval, on the lovely bay of Sagres, 

 sketched his first plan of discovery, to the expeditions of Gae- 

 tano and Cabrillo to the South Sea. The daring expeditions 

 of the Portuguese, Spaniards, and English evince the sudden- 

 ness with which a new sense, as it were, was opened for the 

 appreciation of the grand and the boundless. The advance 

 of nautical science and the application of astronomical methods 

 to the correction of the ship's reckoning favored the efibrts 

 which gave to this age its peculiar character, and revealed to 

 men the image of the earth in all its completeness of form. 

 The discovery of the main-land of tropical America (on the 

 1st of August, 1498) occurred seventeen months after Cabot 

 reached the Labrador coast of North America. Columbus 

 did not see the terra firma of South America on the mount- 

 ainous shores of Paria, as has generally been supposed, but at 

 the Delta of the Orinoco, to the east of Cario Macareo.* Se- 

 bastian Cabott landed on the 24th of June, 1497, on the coast 

 of Labrador, between 56° and 58° north latitude. It has al- 

 ready been noticed that this inhospitable region had been visit- 

 ed by the Icelander Leif Ericksson, five hundred years earlier. 



Columbus attached more importance on his third voyage to 

 the circumstance of finding pearls in the islands of Margarita 

 and Cabagua than to the discovery of the tierra jirme, for he 

 continued firmly persuaded to the day of his death that he had 



* See the results of my investigations, in the Relation Hist, du Vox/' 

 age atix Regions Equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, t. ii., p. 702 ; and 

 in the Examen Crit. de V Hist, de la Geographie, t. i., p. 309. 



t Biddle, Memoir of Sebastian Cahot, 1831, p. .52-61 ; Examen Crit., 

 t. iv., p. 231. 



