232 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION OF 



of mankind as marked by important intellectual progress, we 

 shall find on examination that preparations for this progress 

 had been made during a long series of antecedent centuries. 

 It does not appear to belong to the destinies of the human, 

 race that all portions of it should suffer eclipse or obscura* 

 tion at the same time. A preserving principle maintains 

 the ever living process of the progress of reason. The 

 epoch of Columbus attained the fulfilment of its objects so 

 rapidly, because their attainment was the development of 

 fruitful germs, which had been previously deposited by a 

 series of highly gifted men, who formed as it were a long 

 beam of light which we may trace throughout the whole of 

 what have been called the dark ages. A single century, the 

 thirteenth, shows us Eoger Bacon, Nicolaus Scotus, Albertus 

 Magnus, and Yincentius of Beauvais. The subsequent more 

 general awakening of mental activity soon bore fruit in the 

 extension of geographical knowledge. When, in 1525, 

 Diego Bibero returned from the geographico-astronomical 

 congress which was held at the Puente de Caya near Yelves, 

 for the termination of differences respecting the boundaries 

 of the two great empires of the Portuguese and Spanish 

 monarchies, the outlines of the New Continent had already 

 been traced from Terra del Fuego to the coasts of Labra- 

 dor. On the western side, opposite to Asia, the advances 

 were naturally less rapid; yet in 1543 Rodriguez Cabrillo 

 had already penetrated north of Monterey ; and after this 

 great and adventurous navigator had met his death off 

 New California, in the Channel of Santa Barbara, the pilot; 

 Bartholomew Perreto still led the expedition as far as the 

 43d degree of latitude, where Vancouver's Cape Oxford is 

 situated. The emulative activity of the Spaniards, English, 



