[APPENDIX.]
THE GEOGRAPHICAL RESULTS.
Progress of discovery.
There was a struggling effort of the geographical sense of the world for thirty years and more after the death of Columbus, before the fact began to be grasped that a great continent was interposed as a substantial and independent barrier in the track to India. It took nearly a half century more before men generally recognized that fact, and then in most cases it was accepted with the reservation of a possible Asiatic connection at the extreme north. It was something more than two hundred and twenty years from the death of Columbus before that severance at the north was incontestably established by the voyage of Bering, and a hundred and thirty years longer before at last the contour of the northern coast of the continent was established by the proof of the long-sought northwest passage in 1850. We must now, to complete the story of the influence of Columbus, rehearse somewhat concisely the narrative of this progressive outcome of that wonderful voyage of 1492. The spirit of western discovery, which Columbus imparted, was of long continuance.
The influence of Ptolemy and his career.
"If we wish to make ourselves thoroughly acquainted," says Dr. Kohl, "with the history of discovery in the New World, we must not only follow the navigators on their ships, but we must look into the cabinets of princes and into the counting-houses of merchants, and likewise watch the scholars in their speculative studies." There was no rallying point for the scholar of cosmography in those early days of discovery like the text and influence of Ptolemy.
We know little of this ancient geographer beyond the fact of his living in the early portion of the second century, and mainly at Alexandria, the fittest home of a geographer at that time, since this Egyptian city was peerless for commerce and learning. Here he could do best what he advises all geographers to do, consult the journals of travelers, and get information of eclipses, as the same phenomena were observed at different places; such, for instance, as that of the moon noted at Arbela in the fifth, and seen at Carthage in the second hour.
Portolanos.
The precision of Ptolemy was covered out of sight by graphic fancies among the cosmographers of succeeding ages, till about the beginning of the fourteenth century Italy and the western Mediterranean islands began to produce those atlases of sea-charts, which have come down to us under the name of "portolanos;" and still later a new impetus was given to geographical study by the manuscripts of Ptolemy, with his maps, which began to be common in western Europe in the beginning of the fifteenth century, largely through the influence of communications with the Byzantine peoples.
