The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-07-03

Principal Explorers Of the Globe, from Ulysses
70 Livingstone and Stanley.
The greatest difficulty In writing q sketch OF the
progress Of geographical discovery is to make up
your mind where to begin Who was the FIRST ex-
plorer on land or sea Who, indeed 2 And az IL is
utterly vain to dream Of discovering his name or
whence he came and where he went, It win
answer the present purpose just as well to take
specimen traveller of antiquity ana see what he
thought, or, rather, what his historian thought,
about the world he lived in
EXPLORER TIE FIRST.
The traveller shall take Is, Of course, Ulysses,
whose wanderings after the fall Of Troy told by
Homer In the odyssey" poem containing almost
a. many verses as would MI q quadrupe-sheet
HERALD. Even II Ulysses be purely creature Of
fancy, the story at any rate shows what Greek
OF the time Of Homer, who lived about eight
centuries before Christ, possessed In the way Of
geographical knowledge, and Ulysses himself,
whether man or myth, goes back only four hundred
years further 1t il but reasonable to be-
lieve that Homer, for religious and other
reasons, looked upon Greece, containing as it did
the sacred mountains, the home OF the gods, the
centre Of the world. Yet he makes Ulysses, after a
reach the end Of the EARTH The fades OF into
an awful gloom, and the hero penetrates, by very
short journey onward, the realms OF Pluto. Five
six days. steaming from Smyrna, where Homer
was born, would, therefore, bring him, as
he thought, to the confines of the
universe. Such universe as that would scarcely
give the United States its necessary allowance OF
sea room.
PTOLEMY THE GREAT.
E1.rvs vvvxcca lat
Ptolemy the Great, skipping Herodotus the Creek
and HannO and Himilc0, the Carthaginian adj
mras, and Pytheas, Of Marseilles, and Xenophon
and Ctesias, and Hippocrates and StrabO and
Aristotle, all OF whom however, did much in
their day and generation for the geographical i'm
provement Of the human race. After eight Gen.
turtles of growing civilization men began to at last
get fairly on the high road to correct and extern
sive acquaintance with the globe on whose surface
they dwelt Thus in A. D. 100 (PtOlemy was born in
A. d. 10Y 1t was generally known that the earth
was sphere (4O0O 900 stadia in circumference, &C
cording to Arist0tle) Hippalus had discovered the
regular monsoon to the East Indies, and infOrma-
tion more or less accurate and complete, had been
collected Of the natural features, inhabitants and
productions Of every land where the Roman arms had
been carried, whittier Aexandrian merchants
had traded. Ptolemy spent his life in arranging
his labor in a map, still extant, and tolerably
familiar to all classical geographical students. He
was the first also to divide the surface Of the
earth into degrees OF latitude and longitude
and while we thus enabled to test his map with
considerable degree Of strictness, 1t Is astOnish
ing to find how generally correct so far as the
known parts Of Europe and Northern Africa were
concerned, were his observations.
WONDERFUL MAP.
But rs soon as you have passed through
the Red Sea this curious relic OF the
past becomes hopelessly amusing. Every
reader remembers how marked and distinct
in outline India and Arabia and that long strip
OF land which juts down from Burmah and forms
sort of barrier, with here and there open gate,
between the East ana the Further East, as they
used to be called in old geography books Hindo-
stan, for example, Is almost perfect triangle, and
Ceylon Is pear-shaped satellite Of the mainland.
But in Ptolemy's map Hndostan sprawls away
to the east in vague and unbroken continuity, and
CeylOn rises to the dignity of a vast empire Many
wonderful lands, too, are set down which keener
navigatOrs Of later times have as yet wholly failed
to discover; and as you near the margin of the map
in every direction IL grows naturally more charm
| ingy unintelligible, and is blotched with huge
| doubtful masses OF land and water, which ripper
knowledge has absolutely expunged from the ken of
human eye or fancy. Still, 1t Is impossible to look
upon this map without strange thrill Of interest
the same thrill you experience in looking at those
! recently discovered Portuguese maps of that
same African interior which Livingstone and
Stanley are now making known land to the civil
liked world. Like the Portuguese maps, 1t is by
flashes curousy true, and by general rule singu-
larry and absurdly false and laundering.
IBN BATUTA.
For the next few centuries, during the decline OF
the Roman empire and the growing darkness that
enshrouded Latin art and letters men thought
little and cared less about the science Of geo.
graphy. Every half century they made
| the involuntary acquaintance OF hordes OF strange
barbarians, and these enforced observations upon
the manners and customs OF the outside world gave
them no appetite for further researches Arabian
civilization, however, gave birth to several cele
brated travellers, among whom the kindly and
witty Ibn Batuta holds deservedly the first place.
His works still read with interest by students Of
Oriental history, and one saying OF his about Ben
gal-that it was shell filed with good things'-so
exactly describes the character OF modern Calcutta
that almost every traveller to that so-caed City Of
Palaces repeats 1t in his letters home. Batuta
started on his travels in the 725th year Of
the Hegira a. d. 1924, and, following the pro-
fession OF hadgee, or pilgrim, scampered
over the entire Orient, from the shores Of the
Black Sea to Pekin, from COnstantinople to
Ceylon. His vicssitudes OF fortune, too, were as
strangely various as his voyages were extensive.
Now he was Judge, governor or an ambassador,
and again he was wandering beggar, clothed in
rags and vermin, after the fashion OF pious Mussul
man Migrants out Of luck, even at the present day.
Most Of his writings soon found their way into
Christian tongues and he may fairly, therefore, lay
claim to having added something TO the progress OF
geographical discovery.
MARCO POLO.
Almost contemporary with Batuta was the well
known Marco Polo, the first and perhaps, all things
considered, greatest of Christian travellers. His