COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 64o
and Fuenterrabia in Biscay, or as Venice and Pisa." The
great ocean, the South Pacific, was even at that time regarded
as merely a continuation of the Sinus magnus (fieyas KoXnos]
of Ptolemy, situated before the golden Chersonesus, whilst
Cattigara and the land of the Sines (Thinoj) were supposed to
constitute its eastern boundary. The fanciful hypothesis of
to which this eastern shore of the
Ilipparchus, according
great gulf was connected with the portion of the African
continent which extended far towards the east,* and thus
supposed to make a closed inland sea of the Indian Ocean,
was but little regarded in the middle ages, notwithstanding
the partiality to the views of Ptolemy; a fortunate circum-
stance, when AVC consider the unfavourable influence which it
would doubtlessly have exercised on the direction of great
maritime enterprises.
The discovery and navigation of the Pacific indicate an
epoch which was so much the more important with respect
to the recognition of great cosmical relations, since it was
owing to these events, and therefore scarcely three centuries
and a half ago, that not only the configuration of the western
coast of the new, and the eastern coast of the old continent
were determined ; but also, what is far more important to
meteorology,
that the numerical relations of the area of land
and water upon the surface of our planet, first began to be
freed from the highly erroneous views with which they had
hitherto been regarded. The magnitude of these areas, and
their relative distribution, exercise a powerful influence on
the quantity of humidity contained in the atmosphere, the
alternations in the pressure of the air, the force and vigor of
vegetation, the gi eater or lesser distribution of certain species
of animals, and on the action of many other general phenomena
and physical processes. The larger area apportioned to
the fluid over the solid parts of the earth's crust (in the
ratio of 2 to 1 ), does certain y diminish the habitable
surface for the settlements of the human race, and for the
* Whether the isthmus hypothesis, according to which Cape Prasum,
on the eastern shore of Africa, was connected with the eastern Asiatic
isthmus of Thinae, is to be traced to Marinus of Tyre, or to Hipparchus,
or to the Babylonian Seleucus, or rather to Aristotle, de Ccelo (ii. 14),
is a question treated in detail in another work, Examen crit., t. i. p;?,
144, 161, and 329; t ii. pp. 370-372.
2 T 2