50 



THAT'S IT ; 



sions of the earth. The frigid 

 zones, 15, 19, are the excessively 

 cold and frozen polar regions, 

 which are eternally bound in ice. 

 The temperate zones, 16, 18, are 

 those parts between the lines 

 which mark the tropics, and those 

 which indicate the boundaries of 

 the frigid zones. These tem- 

 perate latitudes are subject to 

 agreeable changes of winter and 

 summer, the severity of the one 

 and the intensity of the other 

 being influenced by the distances 

 of the latitudes from the equator. 

 The word torrid means excessively 

 hot, parching, or burning. The 

 torrid zone, 17, lies between the 

 tropics, and covers that great 

 belt immediately over which the 

 sun is forever shedding its power- 

 ful light and heat, varying its 

 position only according to the 

 line indicated by the ecliptic. 



Let us now see the value of the information 

 we have gleaned from this unfinished outline 

 of geography, which we will hereafter resume. 

 Looking at the maps of the two hemispheres, 

 225, 228, we realize a very good idea of the 

 form of the globe, and the relative situations 

 of its continents, islands, and oceans; we can 

 trace the situations of many of the distant 

 countries of which we frequently read, and to 

 which our relatives and countrymen have some- 

 times to travel ; we can ascertain whether those 

 countries lie wi the torrid, the temperate, or the 

 frigid zones, 258. Knowing this, we can form 

 some idea of their climate; and can ascer- 

 tain whether they lie towards the north, the 

 south, the east, or the west. When we read of 

 a ship being lost, a bcdtle having been fought, or 

 a new land discovered in any specified, latitude 

 and longitude, we can turn to the spot, not 

 merely in imagination, but we have before us, 

 in some particulars, a little photograph, bring- 

 ing within the apace of a few inches a plan of 

 the great world's surface. Bygone kings would 

 have given heaps of gold and precious ston< s to 

 have possessed so accurate a map of the earth 

 as those of* the eastern and western hemispheres, 

 225, 226. It took thousands of years, millions 

 of money, hundreds of ships, and cost an un- 

 known number of lives,, with countless dangers 

 and sufferings, to produce the knowledge and 

 ( xperience necessary to lratne those apparently 

 •iruple plans of the great globe, which the hum- 



blest person is now privileged to look upon. 



To King Edward IV., who died in 1483, the 

 whole oil the western hemisphere was unknown, 

 except probably Greenland, and one or two 

 of the islands of the Northern Ocean. Until 

 1492, King Henry VII. being then upon the 

 throne, the waters of the Atlantic were un?x- 

 plored, and the two great continents of Forth 

 and South America were wrapped in oblivion 

 from the more civilized people of the earth. 

 The fifteenth century had considerably ad- 

 vanced before the great continent of Africa 

 was known to Europeans as far in the direction 

 of the equator as Guinea ; and not until 14S7 

 had ;m European vessel ventured so far as, or 

 dared to sail round, the Cape of Good Hope. 

 In the year 1606, in the reign of James I., the 

 existence of Australia was first made known ; 

 but not until the reign of G-eorge III., 1768, 

 was the extent of that great country under- 

 stood. We shall have hereafter to narrate the 

 histories of Columbus, Diaz, Torres, Cook, 

 and other great men, by w hose discoveries the 

 hidden parts of the world have been made 

 known to us. We will now look through the 

 formal lines of the map upon the face of the 

 earth, and contemplate some of those inte- 

 resting features which no cosmographer* can 

 delineate. 



Looking at the western hemis- 

 phere, 225, we see, extending from 

 the 60th to nearly the 80th paral- 

 lel of north latitude, the country 

 named Greenland, supposed to be 

 an island, but which, in its north- 

 ern extremity, is so bound in ice, 

 that it cannot be explored. Its 

 south-western coasts are indented 

 by deep and narrow inlets, forming 

 some sheltered spots of ground, 

 where there is a limited cultiva- 

 tion. As a whole, Greenland, I, 



l 



259. 



may be regarded as a great con- 

 tinent of ice, the sea-coast of 



• In an ordinary sense, a map-maker. 



