GEOGRAPHY. 21 



Of nearly 7000 square miles contained in the whole, Hawaii alone embrace« 

 4,500. The others are Maui, Oahu, Tauai, Molakai, Ranai, Niihaw, Tahaw- 

 rowa. We have only room to mention the names of the remaining clusters : 

 they are the Mendana Archipelago, including the Marquesas and the Wash- 

 ington Islands ; the Friendly Islands, or the Tonga Archipelago : the Fejee 

 Islands, Navigators' Islands, the Carolines, the Central Archipelago, the 

 Pelew Islands, and the Ladrones or the Marianne Islands. 



B. HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



Geography of Ancient Times {Plates 8, 9, 10). 



The first geographical accounts, or rather indications, are due to the 

 oldest Greek poets, of whom Homer in particular presents us with numerous 

 geographical and ethnographical accounts, for which reason he may be 

 looked upon as the oldest geographer. He supposed the earth to be a 

 circular disk, inclosed by a great body of water, the ocean. In its midst 

 lay the mainland of Hellas. Above the earth was placed the brazen vault 

 of the heavens, and beneath the earth a similar vault, inclosing Tartarus, or 

 the lower regions, situated as far below the earth as this was below the 

 heavens. Of all the regions of the earth, Homer was only acquainted to 

 any extent with Greece and Asia Minor, although he refers to Thrace, 

 Phoenicia, Egypt, Lybia, Ethiopia, and some few islands in Western Europe. 

 Hesiod (800 B. C.) had more knowledge of this subject than Homer ; in his 

 writings we find the first mention of Modern Italy, as also of Spain, under 

 the name of the Garden of the Hesperides. iEschylus and Pindar 

 distinguished three parts of the world, bounded by the Phasis and the Nile. 

 The philosophers of the Ionian school (founded by Thales of Miletus, 640- 

 548 B. C.) endeavored to attain a knowledge of the shape and physical 

 features of the earth by deductions from hypotheses ; it was the school of 

 Pythagoras, however, that first broached the idea of the sphericity of the 

 earth. The so-called logographers, or the oldest Greek historians before 

 Herodotus, extended the knowledge of geography to a considerable extent. 

 Among them may be especially mentioned Hecataeus of Miletus (549-486 

 B. C). Certain projectors and historians of (at that time) great voyages of 

 discovery, as Scylax (509 B. C.) and Hanno of Carthage (500 B. C), also de- 

 serve honorable mention. (For the idea of Geography, as possessed by the 

 ancients, see pi. 8.) 



Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484-408 B. C.) is, however, to be looked 

 upon as the true father of ancient geography, having travelled extensively 

 for years at a time, and published the results in historical works, many of 

 which are still extant. He returned to the first idea of a terrestrial disk 

 resting in the centre of the universe, and assigned to the disk an elongated 

 or oval outline, and an encompassing ocean. A division into two great 

 halves appeared to him more appropriate than that into three parts ; these 



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