[1139] Biographie Universelle.
Hyde. 42. Hyde, in his Religionis Persarum Historia, published in 1700, was the first who illustrated in a systematic manner the religion of Zoroaster, which he always represents in a favourable manner. The variety and novelty of its contents gave this book a credit which, in some degree, it preserves; but Hyde was ignorant of the ancient language of Persia, and is said to have been often misled by Mohammedan authorities.[1140] The vast increase of Oriental information in modern times, as has been intimated above, renders it difficult for any work of the seventeenth century to keep its ground. In their own times, the writings of Kircher on China, and still more those of Ludolph on Abyssinia, which were founded on his own knowledge of the country, claimed a respectable place in Oriental learning. It is remarkable that very little was yet known of the Indian languages, though grammars existed of the Tamul, and perhaps some others, before the close of the seventeenth century.[1141]
[1140] Id.
[1141] Eichhorn, Gesch. der Cultur, v., 269.
Sect. V.
ON GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY.
Maps of the Sansons. 43. The progress of geographical science long continued to be slow. If we compare the map of the world in 1651, by Nicholas Sanson, esteemed on all sides the best geographer of his age, with one by his son in 1692, the variances will not appear, perhaps, so considerable as we might have expected. Yet some improvement may be detected by the eye. Thus, the Caspian sea has assumed its longer diameter from north to south, contrary to the old map. But the sea of Aral is still wanting. The coasts of New Holland, except to the east, are tolerably laid down, and Corea is a peninsula, instead of an island. Cambalu, the imaginary capital of Tartary, has disappeared;[1142] but a vast lake is placed in the centre of that region; the Altai range is carried far too much to the north, and the name of Siberia seems unknown. Africa and America have nearly the same outline as before; in the former, the empire of Monomotopa stretches to join that of Abyssinia in about the 12th degree of south latitude; and the Nile still issues, as in all the old maps, from a lake Zayre, in nearly the same parallel. The coasts of Europe, and especially of Scandinavia, are a little more accurate. The Sanson family, of whom several were publishers of maps, did not take pains enough to improve what their father had executed, though they might have had material helps from the astronomical observations which were now continually made in different parts of the world.
[1142] The Cambalu of Marco Polo is probably Pekin; but the geographers frequently placed this capital of Cathay north of the wall of China.
De Lisle’s map of the world. 44. Such was the state of geography when, in 1699, De Lisle, the real founder of the science, at the age of twenty-four, published his map of the world. He had been guided by the observations, and worked under the directions of Cassini, whose tables of the emersion of Jupiter’s satellites, calculated for the meridian of Bologna in 1668, and, with much improvement, for that of Paris in 1693, had prepared the way for the perfection of geography. The latitudes of different regions had been tolerably ascertained by observation; but no good method of determining the longitude had been known before this application of Galileo’s great discovery. It is evident that the appearance of one of those satellites at Paris being determined by the tables to a precise instant, the means were given to find the longitudinal distance of other places by observing the difference of time; and thus a great number of observations having gradually been made, a basis was laid for an accurate delineation of the surface of the globe. The previous state of geography and the imperfect knowledge which the mere experience of navigators could furnish, may be judged by the fact that the Mediterranean sea was set with an excess of 300 leagues in length, being more than one third of the whole. De Lisle reduced it within its bounds, and cut off at the same time 500 leagues from the longitude of Eastern Asia. This was the commencement of the geographical labours of De Lisle, which reformed, in the first part of the eighteenth century, not only the general outline of the world, but the minuter relations of various countries. His maps amount to more than one hundred sheets.[1143]
[1143] Eloge de De Lisle, in Œuvres de Fontenelle, vol. vi., p. 253. Eloge de Cassini, in vol. v., p. 328. Biogr. Universelle.