Transcriber's Note
Spellings are sometimes erratic. A few obvious misprints and punctuation omissions have been corrected, but in general the original spelling has been retained.
BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No CCCLXXXV. NOVEMBER, 1847. VOL. LXII.
CONTENTS.
| The Navigation Of The Antipodes | [515] |
| American Copyright. | [534] |
| Evenings At Sea.—no. II. | |
| Henry Meynell | [547] |
| Was Rubens A Colourist? | [564] |
| The American Library. | [574] |
| Units: Tens: Hundreds: Thousands. | [593] |
| Research And Adventure In Australia. | [602] |
| Magus Muir. | [614] |
| A November Morning's Reverie. | [618] |
| Valedictory Visits At Rome. | |
| The Villa Borghese. | [622] |
| The Villa Albani. | [625] |
| Highland Destitution. | [630] |
THE NAVIGATION OF THE ANTIPODES.[1]
One of the most striking, and perhaps the most intellectual advances of the age, is in the progress of geographical discovery. It is honourable to England, that this new impulse to a knowledge of the globe began with her spirit of enterprise, and it is still more honourable to her that that spirit was originally prompted by benevolence. Cook, with whose voyages this era may be regarded as originating, was almost a missionary of the benevolence of England, and of George III.; and the example of both the great discoverer and the good king has been so powerfully impressed on all the subsequent attempts of English adventurers, that there has been scarcely a voyage to new regions which has not been expressly devised to carry with it some benefit to their people.
When the spirit of discovery was thus once awakened, a succession of intelligent and daring men were stimulated to the pursuit; and the memorable James Bruce, who had begun life as a lawyer, grown weary of the profession, and turned traveller through the South of Europe at a period when the man who ventured across the Pyrenees was a hero; gallantly fixed his eyes on Africa, as a region of wonders, of which Europe had no other knowledge than as a land of lions, of men more savage than the lions, and of treasures of ivory and gold teeming and unexhausted since the days of Solomon. The hope of solving the old classic problem, the source of the Nile, pointed his steps to Abyssinia, and after a six years' preparation in his consulate of Algiers, he set forward on his dangerous journey, and arrived at the source of the Bahr-el-Azrek, (the Blue River,) one of the branches of the great river. Unluckily he had been misdirected, for the true Nile is the Bahr-el-Abiad, (the White River.)
His volumes, published in 1790, excited equal curiosity and censure; but the censure died away, the curiosity survived, and a succession of travellers, chiefly sustained by the African Association, penetrated by various routes into Africa.