OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 653 



One circumstance which specially contributed to the exten- 

 sion of cosmical views at this enterprising period, was the 

 immediate contact of a numerous mass of Europeans with the 

 free and grand exotic forms of nature, on the plains and 

 mountainous regions of America, and, (in consequence of the 

 voyage of Vasco de Gama), on the eastern shores of Africa 

 and Southern India. Even in the beginning of the sixteenth 

 century, a Portuguese physician, Garcia de Orta, under the 

 protection of the noble Martin Alfonso de Sousa, established, 

 on the present site of Bombay, a botanical garden, in 

 which he cultivated the medicinal plants of the neighbour- 

 hood. The muse of Camoens has paid Garcia de Orta the 

 tribute of patriotic praise. The impulse to direct observation 

 was now everywhere awakened, whilst the cosmographical 

 writings of the middle ages were to be regarded less as the 

 result of actual observation than as mere compilations, re- 

 flecting the opinions of classical antiquity. Two of the greatest 

 men of the sixteenth century, Conrad Gessner and Andreas 

 Csesalpinus, have the high merit of having opened a new path 

 to zoology and botany. 



In order to give a more vivid idea of the early influence 

 exercised by oceanic discoveries on the enlarged sphere of 

 the physical and astronomical sciences connected with navi- 

 gation, I will call attention, at the close of this description, to 

 some luminous points, which we may already see glimmering 

 through the writings of Columbus. Their first faint light 

 deserves to be traced with so much the more care, because 

 they contain the germs of general cosmical views. I will not 

 pause here to consider the proofs of the results which I have 

 enumerated, since I have given them in detail in another 

 work, entitled Examen critique de rhistoire de la geographic { 

 du nouveau continent et des progres de V astronomic nautique ^ 

 aux xv e et xvi c siecles. But in order to avoid the imputation - 

 of undervaluing the views of modern physical knowledge, in 

 comparison with the observations of Columbus, I will give tha 

 literal translation of a few lines contained in a letter which 

 the Admiral wrote from Haiti in the month of October, 

 1498. He writes as follows: "Each time that I sail from 

 Spain to India, as soon as I have proceeded about a hun- 

 dred nautical miles to the west of the Azores, I per- 

 ceive an extraordinary alteration in the movement of the 



<" 



