GREAT NATURAL DIVISIONS OF THE EARTH. 197 



THE NORTHERN BASIN. 



This contains the Arctic Ocean, surrounding the North Pole. It is bounded by the 

 northern extremities of Asia, Europe, and America, and the Arctic circle. The correct 

 outline of this bed has however yet to be determined. 



THE WESTERN BASIN. 



This extends from the Arctic circle, on the north, to a line drawn from the extremity of 

 Africa to that of America, on the south, and forms the bed of the Atlantic Ocean, divided 

 by the equator into north and south. It is a channel between the two largest tracts of 

 land upon the globe, 9000 miles in length, and from 700 to 4000 miles in breadth. 



THE SOUTH-EASTERN BASIN. 



This includes the Pacific Ocean, between America and Asia, extending in breadth 

 nearly half round the globe, or about 11,000 miles, and in length about 8000 miles, from 

 Behring's Straits on the north, to where it meets the Southern Ocean. The latter is 

 bounded on the north by a line drawn from Cape Horn to the Cape of Good Hope, thence 

 to Van Diemen's Land, by New Zealand to Cape Horn again. Its limit on the south is 

 the Antarctic Continent. This vast bed also comprises the Indian Ocean, lying between 

 Africa on the west, the Asiatic islands on the east, Hindustan and Persia on the north, 

 and the Southern Ocean. 



Each of these vast oceanic tracts is divided into lesser compartments, or seas the 

 denomination given to considerable collections of water penetrating inland. Thus, the 

 Northern Basin has the White Sea, and the Sea of Kara. The Western Basin embraces 

 the Baltic, North, Mediterranean, and Caribbean Seas. The South-Eastern Basin 

 includes the Red and Yellow Seas, and the Sea of Okotsk. Still smaller collections of 

 water running into the land are classed as gulfs or bays, and large inland seas are so 

 entitled which have a broad and open communication with the main deep. Where the 

 passage which connects a collection of water nearly land-locked with the outlying ocean 

 is narrow, it is called a Channel ; and, when still narrower, a Strait ; and a Sound, when it 

 is shallow. As an example of this, we have the English Channel, the Straits of Dover, 

 and the Sound connecting the Baltic and the North Sea. 



The other great natural division of the surface is distributed chiefly into two im- 

 mense spaces, to which the term continent is applied a Latin derivative, signifying that 

 which is connected. One of these, including Asia, Africa, and Europe, is known as the 

 eastern, and the other, comprising America, as the western continent, because one lies to 

 the east, and the other to the west, of the meridian of the Feroe Isles, from which longitude 

 was formerly reckoned. They are also styled the Old and New worlds, owing to the western 

 continent having been unknown till the close of the fifteenth century to the inhabitants of 

 the eastern, the parent of nations, the subject of history, the cradle of the arts. Of the ant- 

 arctic continent, we know at present too little to do more than merely mention its existence. 

 Those portions of the great tracts of land which have peculiar natural features are 

 ranged in classes according to their contour. To a considerable projection from the 

 mainland into the sea, so as to be nearly enclosed by it, and approaching almost to an 

 island, as Italy, Spain, and the Morea, the term peninsula is applied. A narrow slip of 

 land connecting two great masses, having the sea on its other sides, is called an isthmus ; 

 as the Isthmus of Suez, connecting Asia and Africa ; of Darien, joining North and South 

 America ; and of Corinth, linking the Morea with Northern Greece, where the Isthmian 

 Games were celebrated, from which they obtained the name. The smaller projections of 

 land into the sea are variously denominated capes, headlands, and promontories. These 



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