290 COSMOS, 



he divined in the northern hemisphere, between Theria and 

 the coasts of Thine. *" 



As we have already remarked, one hemisphere of the earth 

 (whether we divide the sphere through the equator or through 

 the meridian of Teneriffe) has a much greater expansion of 

 elevated land than the opposite one : these two vast ocean- 

 girt tracts of land, which we term the eastern and western, 

 or the Old and New Continents, present, however, conjointly 

 with the most striking contrasts of configuration and position 

 of their axes, some similarities of form, especially with refer- 

 ence to the mutual relations of their opposite coasts. In the 

 eastern continent, the predominating direction — the position 

 of the major axis — inclines from east to west (or, more cor- 

 rectly speaking, from southwest to northeast), while in the 

 western continent it inclines from south to north (or, rather, 

 from south-southeast to north-northwest). Both terminate to 

 the north at a parallel coinciding nearly with that of 70°, 

 while they extend to the south in pyramidal points, having 

 submarine prolongations of islands and shoals. Such, for in- 

 stance, are the Archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, the Lagullas 

 Bank south of the Cape of Good Hope, and Van Diemen's 

 Land, separated from New Holland by Bass's Straits. North- 

 ern Asia extends to the above parallel at Cape Taimura, which, 

 according to Krusenstern, is 78° 16', while it falls below it 

 from the mouth of the Great Tschukotschja River eastward 

 to Behring's Straits, in the eastern extremity of Asia — Cook's 

 East Cape — which, according to Beechey, is only 66° 3'.t 

 The northern shore of the New Continent follows with toler- 

 able exactness the parallel of 70°, since the lands to the north 

 and south of Barrow's Strait, from Boothia Felix and Victoria 

 Land, are merely detached islands. 



The pyramidal configuration of all the southern extremities 

 of continents belongs to the similitudines physicce in configu- 

 ratione mundi, to which Bacon already called attention in his 

 Novum Organon, and with which Reinhold Foster, one of 

 Cook's companions in his seq^nd voyage of circumnavigation, 

 connected some ingenious considerations. On looking eastward 

 from the meridian of Teneriffe, we perceive that the southern 

 extremities of the three continents, viz., Africa as the extreme 



* Strabo, lib. i., p. 65, Casaub. See Humboldt, Examen Crit., t. i- 

 p. 152. 



t On the mean latitude of the Northern Asiatic shores, and the tru'S 

 name of Cape Taimura (Cape Siewero-Wostotschnoi), and Cape North- 

 east (Schalagskoi Mys), see Humboldt, Asie Centrale, t. iii., p. 35, 37 



