52 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
bid not find favour with scientific or seafaring men, with the exception of the name of 
“ Great Ocean,” which he gave to the Pacific. 
T': ir;»l. >t manner of studying the relief of the globe is by dividing the land into 
tin ge basins, separated by ridges whose infinite ramifications cover the continents 
with a natural network. Upon this primitive fact the French geographer bases all his 
th-vrvs of general geography. Doubtless Buache’s ideas are fundamentally true, but 
th y Lave one fault . like all theories which precede observation, they strain the facts 
and e> iggcrate the deductions. They arc, nevertheless, a first step in the right direction 
towards a scientific method, founding geography no longer on an abstract line, but on the 
real form and relief of each region. 
Buache’s oceanic nomenclature was soon abandoned, but his conception of submarine 
mountains found more or less favour with Alex, von Humboldt, Bergman, Kant, 
Gatterer, Ritter, and Leopold von Buch Borsch, in his work on Orography, 1 opposes 
these ideas, saying : — “The mountains which reach the shore should not be considered as 
ii- ing united with those running in the same direction in islands or in other continents.” 
Hiekis h, 2 on the other hand, thinks that although this proposition may be correct, it 
oust not be taken in too absolute a sense, for the chain of mountains in the island of 
Nova 7/cmbla should be considered as a prolongation of the Ural Mountains. Deep-sea 
. gs have proved that it is only in the vicinity of continental coasts and islands 
t ha' the floor of 1 lie sea may be considered as a prolongation of the neighbouring land; 
the*** soundings have taught us to form a more correct idea of the orography of the sea, 
and have reduced hypothetical conceptions to their real value. 
PiroajBn or 
CAJtroGRArtlT IX 
the HixTrrrra, 
SrvnrmxTH, 
a>p Kicftruvni 
With the discovery of America and the circumnavigation of Africa a new era opened 
f«»r navigation. Endeavours were immediately made to find more accurate methods of 
•crt. lining the position of vessels in the open sea, and more care was bestowed on the 
C‘»:: -t ruction of charts and the errors of the compass. The voyage of the Astronomer- 
Royal, Hally, in 1699, was undertaken solely with those objects in view, and was 
fob o. 1 by the construction of a variation chart, and proposals for finding longitudes 
from occultations of fixed stars. 
\S i have seen that the art of drawing up maps was cultivated in the fourteenth and 
fifto '.tfi centuries by the seafaring nations of the Mediterranean, and marine charts 
improv. .1 more rapidly than maps of the land. In the sixteenth century this art passed 
into he hand* of the Spaniards and Portuguese ; about the middle of that century 
’ lc German draughtsmen took the lead; towards the end of the sixteenth and during 
th vent' filth centuries the Dutch and Flemish map-makers flourished, and were after- 
ward* superseded by the French. 
1 Bnneb, Von aebc ah riUn de* fatten Landes, inabeuondere von Uebirge, Marburg, 1817, p. 16 . 
' Hi«-ku<h t thu Sr»t*rn dcs Urals, Dorpat, 1882, p. 220. 
