20i 



♦ KNOW^LEDGE ♦ 



[July 1, 1887. 



length of the track followed by Columbus from Huelva to 

 San Salvador with the shortest route shown — running across 

 the easternmost of the Azores — to see how far Columbus 

 went out of his way. 



But apart from any trustworthy information as to the posi- 

 tion of Cathay, Columbus might, with a little knowledge of 

 the propertiesof the sphere, have recognised that his shortest 

 course to the East Indies, as pictured in the maps of his 

 dav, required him to run as far northwards as the course 

 marked in Map I. from Cape St. Vincent to St. Augustine, 

 Florida. By following such a course he would have been 

 brought, after rounding the Azores on the north, to more 

 southerly latitudes, and finally into the latitudes of the 



Tart op a Terrestrui. Globb, 



made at Nuremberg 



lu lire year 149--. 

 bv Martin Si:ftc.\ 



Trinidad, so named by him because of a great triple moun- 

 tain on the island. The fourth journey took him to the 

 South Caribbee Islands, and, again passing into the Carib- 

 bean Sea, he reached the mainland near Cape Honduras ; 

 butOjeda had reached the mainland of South America (pro- 

 bably Surinam) in 1499, nearly three years earlier. 



It will interest the reader to compare together the various 

 tracks across the Atlantic shown in ]\Iap I., all of which, 

 except the rhumb course from Queenstown to New York, 

 are the shortest routes between the places they connect. 



The map has been drawn specially, however, to illustrate 

 a little work on America which I am now preparing. It 

 will be observed that only the thirteen States which pro- 

 claimed their- independence more than a century since, and 

 being chiefly of British blood most manfully maintained their 

 independence and established it, are shown on the westward 

 side of the map. The area which our British colonies then 

 occupied can be recognised at a glance, and compared with 

 the area of Great Britain and Ireland on a map such as 

 this, whereas no ordinary atlas conveys clear ideas on this 

 point. We see also, what no map hitherto drawn has I 

 tliink properly shown, not only the relative areas of the 

 home country and its colonies, but, properly represented to 

 scale, the distances separating the Britons at home from 

 their kinsmen across the Atlantic. Buf for this convenient 

 remoteness, our gallant fellow-countrymen on the other side 

 of the Atlantic might haply have had to wait for a genera- 

 tion or two longer before they were able successfully to get 

 rid of the blundering sway of the crazed German George III., 

 supported by a large but silly section of the folk at home. 



Map II. 



Canaries, somewhere in west longitude 85° — befoie reaching 

 which, however, he would have fetched the shore of Florida. 

 The other outward journeys made by Columbus were not 

 less cu'cuitous. The student of Washington Irving's Life of 

 Columbus will find it interesting to follow these journeys on 

 such a projection as Map I., or, even better to mark it in, 

 as shown from day to day on Mercator's charts, on the map 

 of the Atlantic at page 106, where the currents of that 

 ocean are also shown. In the second journey Columbus, 

 after first discovering the North Caribbee Islands, passed 

 within the Caribbean Sea, and discovered Jamaica and Cuba. 

 On the third journey he would doubtless have discovered 

 the mainland of South America, had not provisions run 

 short, compelling him to take a more northerly course for 

 the region where he knew land lay. He thus reached 



ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES. 



MONG the curiosities of the science of our day 



■A chief place must be assigned to the evidence 



which has been obtained from the study of 



language in regard to the past history of 



various races. If we consider the crude 



attempt made by a Semitic race to interpret 



the variety of human methods of speech, 



and contrast that quaint story of the drspersion of man 



with the conclusions resulting from the careful study of the 



evidence given by languages themselves, we find something 



truly marvellous in the progress men have been able to make 



in dealing with the mystery of language. The story of 



Babel is like giving up the riddle ; the results already obtained 



by philologists seem by comparison like a complete answer, 



though in reality they bring before us difficulties greater far 



than those they remove. In this, however, the study of 



language resembles all other study. All knowledge really 



worth anything increases our consciousness of ignorance. 



It is from language alone we know that the Indians and 

 the Persians are nearer of kin to us than the Jews or Syrians, 

 for the beginnings of all four races are lost in a remote 

 antiquity. But the connection between the Indian language 

 (even in its ancient form as Sanskrit) and modern languages 

 of the Teutonic fomily is not obvious until the rules for 

 making compr.rison are recognised. For instance, one would 

 hardly suppose that the relationship between the Sanskrit 

 vrkas and our English " wolf " could be shown to be 

 demonstrably real, or in fact more than the merest guess. 

 Yet this relationship is only one of a set, and when we take 

 the same word in various Indo-European languages, we find 

 that the law of the connection shows itself even on the 

 strength of this one word alone, though, of com-se, for com- 

 plete demonstration other words associated in the .same way 

 have to be considered. Thus we have: — 



