30 NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



One of the effects of the habitual use of maps on 

 a small scale is that untravelled persons, even though 

 conversant with the facts of geography, feel it difficult 

 to realize the great dimensions of the more distant 

 parts of the world as compared with our diminutive 

 European continent. Thus it came on me with some- 

 thing of surprise that the Bay of Panama is fully a 

 hundred and twenty sea miles across from headland 

 to headland, and that the run from Panama to Callao, 

 which is scarcely one-third of the length of the South 

 American continent, is rather longer than that from 

 Bergen to the Straits of Gibraltar. The case, of 

 course, is much worse with those accustomed to use 

 maps on Mercator's projection. It profits nothing to 

 explain, even to the most intelligent youth, the nature 

 and amount of the errors involved in that mode of 

 representing a spherical surface on a plane. I verily 

 believe that all the mischief done by the stupidity, 

 ignorance, and perversity of the writers of bad school- 

 books is trifling compared to the amount of false ideas 

 spread through the world by the productions of that 

 respectable Fleming. 



The steamers of the Pacific Mail Company employed 

 for the traffic between San Francisco and Valparaiso 

 are as perfectly suited to the peculiar conditions of 

 the navigation as they would be unfit for long sea- 

 voyages in any other part of the world. In the calm 

 waters of this region, rarely ruffled even by a stiff 

 breeze, the fortunate seamen engaged in this service 

 know no hardships from storm or cold. Their only 

 anxiety is from the fogs that at some seasons beset 

 parts of the coast. In each voyage they pass under 



