Four main causes have led to geographical discovery and exploration, namely, commercial intercourse between different countries, the operations of war, pilgrimages and missionary zeal, and in later times the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, which is the highest of all motives.

The Phoenicians are the earliest commercial people of whose discoveries we have any correct accounts. They first explored the shores of the Mediterranean, and eventually extended their voyages through the Straits of Gibraltar, and visited the western shores of Spain and Africa, planting colonies and opening wider fields for their commerce by instructing the natives in their arts and improvements. They also monopolized the trade with India; and their chief emporium, the rich city of Tyre, was the centre whence the products of the East and West were distributed. The trade of the West was brought from the port called Tarshish in Scripture, which is probably identical with Carthage, where the ships arrived from Spain, Africa, and distant Britain. Concerning the far eastern land reached by the Phoenicians, called Ophir in Scripture, there has been much dispute. The voyage to Ophir, we are told, occupied three years thither and homeward, and the cargo consisted of gold, ivory, apes, peacocks, and “algum” wood (1 Kings ix. 26, and X. 11). The following reasons lead to the conclusion that Ophir was the Malabar coast of India. In the Hebrew the word for apes is koph (without any etymology in Semitic tongues), in Sanskrit kafi. Ivory in Hebrew is shen-hal>bim∙, in Sanskrit ibha is an elephant. Peacocks is in Hebrew tokki-im from togei, the name still used on the Malabar coast, derived from the Sanskrit. Algum wood, or almug, is corrupted from υalgu (ka), sandal wood from Malabar. Thus the Phoenicians were the first great carriers of the ancient world, extending their commercial operations from their central mart of Tyre on the Syrian coast to the tin-yielding isles of the Cassiterides in the far west, and to the ports of India in the east.

The great Phoenician colony of Carthage retained in full vigour the commercial spirit of the parent state. Tbe Carthaginians traded on the coasts of Spain and Gaul, and extended their discoveries southwards along the coast of Africa, and to the Fortunate Islands, now known as the Canaries. Herodotus relates how the Phoenicians, setting sail from the Red Sea, made their way to the south, and when autumn approached they drew their vessels to land, sowed a crop, and waited till it was grown, when they reaped it and again put to sea. Having spent two years in this manner, in the third year they reached the pillars of Hercules and returned to Egypt. But the most celebrated voyage of antiquity, undertaken for the purpose of discovery, was the expedition under Hanno, fitted out by the senate of Carthage with the view of attempting the complete survey of the western coast of Africa. Hanno is said, in the Periplus Hannonis, to have set sail with a fleet of 60 vessels, and the extent of his voyage has been variously estimated as reaching to the river Nun, to a little beyond Sierra Leone, and even as far as the Gulf of Benin. Another famous navigator, who sailed from the Carthaginian colony of Massilia (Marseilles) in about 320 b.c., was Pytheas. He steered northwards along the coasts of Spain and Gaul, sailed round the island of Albion, and stretching still further to the north, he discovered an island known to the ancients as Ultima Thule, which may possibly have been the Shetland Isles.

The conquests of Alexander the Great, by making known the vast empire of Persia, materially enlarged the bounds of geographical knowledge. Although the course of his expedition was mainly by land, the mind of the conqueror was also intent on commerce and maritime discovery. In 327 b.c. Alexander led an army of Greeks down the valley of the Cabul river into the Punjab, and his expedition resulted in a voyage of discovery from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Tigris, aud in opening direct intercourse between Grecian and Hindu civilization. The Greeks who accompanied Alexander were accurate observers, and described the towns and villages, the products and the aspect of the country, with care. The conqueror resolved to return through Gedrosia (the modern Baluchistan), but he also intended to open the trade by sea between Europe and India, aud his general Nearchus, a native of Crete, volunteered to lead this famous voyage of discovery. His fleet consisted of 30 galleys containing 2000 men. On October 2, 326 b.c., the fleet of Nearchus left the Indus, and the anchorages each night are carefully recorded. On the 17th of December Cape Jask was doubled and the fleet entered the Persian Gulf, and on the 9th of February it was at the mouth of the Kanin. Nearchus rejoined Alexander at Susa; and the conqueror himself embarked in the fleet and ascended the Tigris to Opis, above Baghdad. He then ordered his successful admiral to prepare another expedition forjhe circumnavigation of Arabia; but unfortunately the great conqueror died at Babylon in 324 b.c., and the fleet was dispersed.

The dynasties founded by Alexander’s generals, Seleucus, Antiochus, aud Ptolemy, encouraged the same spirit of enterprise which their master had so carefully fostered, and extended geographical knowledge in several directions. Seleucus Nicator established the Greco-Bactrian empire, and continued the intercourse with India. The most authentic information respecting the Gangetic valley was supplied by Megasthenes, an ambassador sent by Seleucus, who reached the remote city of Patali-putra, the modern Patna, on the Ganges.

The Ptolemies of Egypt showed equal anxiety to extend the bounds of geographical knowledge. Ptolemy Euergetes sent an expedition which discovered Abyssinia, and fitted out a fleet under Eudoxus to explore the Arabian Sea. After two successful voyages, Eudoxus left the Egyptian service, and proceeded to Cadiz with the object of fitting out an expedition for the purpose of African discovery; and we learn from Strabo that the veteran explorer made at least two voyages southward along the coast of Africa. The Ptolemies sent fleets annually from their Red Sea ports of Berenice and Myos Hormus to Arabia, as well as to ports on the coasts of Africa and India.

The Romans did not encourage navigation and commerce with the same ardour as their predecessors; still the luxury of Rome, which gave rise to demands for the varied products of -all the countries of the known world, led to an active trade both by ships and caravans. But it was the military genius of Rome, and the ambition for universal empire, which led not only to the discovery but also to the survey of nearly all Europe, and of large tracts in Asia and Africa. Every new war produced a new survey and itinerary of the countries which were conquered. In the height of their power the Romans had surveyed and explored all the coasts of the Mediterranean, Italy, Greece, the Balkan peninsula, Spain, Gaul, western Germany, and Britain; but the eastern parts of Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia were still unknown regions. In Africa their empire included Egypt, Carthage, Numidia, and Mauritania. In Asia they held Asia Minor and Syria, had sent expeditions into Arabia, and were acquainted with the more distant countries formerly overrun by Alexander, namely, Persia, Scythia, Bactria, and India. Roman intercourse with India especially led to the extension of geographical knowledge.

The first Roman who undertook a journey to India was solely influenced by the desire to acquire a knowledge of the people and their doctrines. This was Apollonius, a resident at Antioch, who set out towards the close of the first half century of our era. He and his attendants, Daιnis and Philostratus, reached the Indus, and journeying across the Punjab, came to a bronze pillar with the inscription “Here Alexander halted”; but it is doubtful whether the party advanced as far the Ganges. It was, however, in the reigns of Severus and his immediate successors that Roman intercourse with India was at its height.

In all time, while warriors and explorers extended the area of geographical knowledge, there have been students who have striven to systematize and put into due form the accumulated information. From the first it was perceived that a knowledge of localities could not be attained without some notion of their relative positions, and their distances from each other. Consequently the attempts to establish fixed principles on which the surface of the earth, or any portion of it, could be delineated, were almost coeval with the earliest voyages of discovery.

The first attempt made to determine the position of places appears to have depended on the division of the earth into “climates,”distinguished by the. species of animalsand plants produced in each. This method, however, was soon abandoned for another, which consisted in observing at places the length of the longest and shortest days by means of a “guomon.” An upright pillar of a known height being erected on a level pavement, by observing the lengths of the meridian shadows the progress of the sun from tropic to tropic was traced. The most ancient observation with the gnomon is that of Pytheas, in the days of Alexander the Great, who observed at the summer solstice at Massilia that the length of the meridian shadow was to the height of the gnomon as 213⅜ to 600, an observation which makes the meridian altitude of the sun at Marseilles on that day 70° 27'. The merit of the invention of the gnomon in Greece is ascribed to the astronomical school of Miletus; but there is reason to believe that this method of observation was invented in Egypt, and that Thales carried the knowledge of it into Greece. This was the first step towards connecting geography with astronomy; and little further advance was made until the establishment of the famous astronomical school of Alexandria,

Eratosthenes (276—196 b.c.) was the first who reduced geography to a regular system, and laid its foundations on clear and solid principles. Under the patronage of the Ptolemies he had access to all the materials collected by Alexander and his generals. The doctrine of the sphericity of the earth had by this time been adopted, and the aim of his labours was to delineate, in conformity with this principle, the known parts of the earth’s surface. Founding his system on the use of the gnomon, he supposed a line to be traced through certain places, in all of which the longest day was known to be exactly of the same length. Such a line would evidently be a parallel to the equator. This first parallel passed through Rhodes, and was ever afterwards adopted as the basis of ancient maps. Eratosthenes continued his work by tracing other parallels at certain intervals from the first, one through Alexandria, another through Syene, a third through Meroe. He also traced, at right, angles to these, a meridian passing through Rhodes and Alexandria, southwards to Syene and Meroe. As the progress which he thus made towards the completion of what he had so skilfully conceived naturally tended to enlarge his ideas concerning geographical science, he attempted next to determine the circumference of the globe by the actual measurement of a segment of one of its great circles. Posidonius made another measurement of an arc of the meridian between Rhodes and Alexandria about 170 years 1 afterwards; but the amount of error in the calculations of Eratosthenes and Posidonius is uncertain, for want of a knowledge of the true length of the stadium in which their results are expressed. The ancients made their first meridian at the sacred promontory of Iberia, and their longitudinal error increased rapidly as they advanced eastwards. This is no doubt due to their longitudes being based entirely on distances calculated in the itineraries of travellers. Such data of course produced very great distortions in the representations given of the countries on the surface of the globe.

The improvements introduced by Eratosthenes were perfected in principle by Hipparchus, who flourished from 160 to 135 b.c. Ho was the first astronomer who undertook the arduous task of making a catalogue of the stars and fixing their relative positions. His object was to transmit to posterity a knowledge of the state of the heavens at the period of his observations. The extremities of the imaginary axis round which the heavens perform their diurnal revolutions suggest two fixed points by which the position of the great circle of the celestial sphere, called the celestial equator, is determined. If a great circle be supposed to pass through these points and any star, the position of the star will be ascertained if we measure in degrees and parts of a degree the arc of the meridian circle intercepted between th? star and the equator, and also the arc of the equator intercepted between a given point in it and the meridian circle passing through the star. Upon this principle Hipparchus arranged the stars according to their places in the heavens; and the great improvement which he introduced into geography consisted in this, that he applied to the determining of the position of any point on the surface of the earth the same rule which he had introduced in the arrangement of the constellations. Thus he furnished the means of ascertaining the relative positions of places with far greater accuracy than could be obtained from itinerary measurements. He made a considerable number of observations for latitude, and pointed out how longitudes might be determined by observing the eclipses of the sun and moon.

The most ancient maps that have reached modern times are those which illustrate Ptolemy’s geography, but an earlier map made for Aristagoras, king of Miletus (500 b.c.), is minutely described by Herodotus. Ptolemy composed his system of geography in the reign of Antoninus Pius, about 150 a.d. His materials consisted of all the itineraries prepared by the Romans, proportions of the height of the gnomon and its shadow at the time of the equinoxes and solstices taken by different astronomers, calculations founded on the length of the longest days, and various reports of travellers and navigators. Ptolemy undertook the task of comparing and reducing this mass of crude material into one system, following the principles laid down by Hipparchus, but which had been neglected during the two centuries and a half since his time, even by such men as Strabo and Pliny. In Ptolemy’s work we find for the first time the mathematical principle of the construction of maps, as well as of several projections of the sphere.

The errors of Ptolemy arose from defective information, and the want in many instances, and especially as regards the remote parts of the then known world, of astronomical observations. He adopted the measure of a degree at 500 stadia; and the latitudes along the chief parallel of Rhodes, as first laid down by Eratosthenes, are tolerably correct. But the elements for determining the longitudes were still derived from itineraries, and errors in latitude accumulated to the north and south of the central parallel.

Although Ptolemy was the first scientific geographer whose work has come down to us in a complete form, the earlier labours of Strabo, who lived in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, are of equal value, and we fortunately possess the whole of his 17 books. Pliny also devoted two books of his extensive work to geography; and the scattered geographical notices of other ancient writers were collected into one work of four volumes by Hudson, and published between 1698 and 1712, with notes by Dodwell. From the days of Ptolemy to the revival of letters in Europe, little was done towards the scientific improvement of geographical science, though military and commercial enterprise led to a great extension of knowlege of the earth’s surface.

After the dissolution of the Roman empire, Constantinople became the last refuge of arts, taste, and elegance; while Alexandria continued to be the emporium whence were imported the commodities of the East. The em peror Justinian sent two Nestorian monks to China, who returned with eggs of the silkworm concealed in a hollow cane, and thus silk manufactures were established in the Peloponnesus and the Greek Islands. It was also in the reign of Justinian that Cosmas Indicopleustes, an Egyptian merchant, made several voyages, and afterwards composed his Topographia Christiana, containing a particular description of India. The great outburst of Mahometan conquest was followed by an Arabian civilization, having its centres at Cordova and Baghdad, in connexion with which geography again received a share of attention.

From the 9th to the 13th century intelligent Mahometan travellers wrote accounts of what they had seen and heard in distant lands, which have been handed down to us; while the caliphs of Baghdad encouraged the study of geographical science.

The caliph Al-Mamûn, the worthy son and successor of Hârûn er-Rashid, caused an Arabic version of Ptolemy’s great astronomical work (2wταfιs yeylστf) to be made, which is known as the Almagest, the word being nothing more than the Greek p(ylστη with the Arabic article al prefixed. The geography of Ptolemy is also constantly referred to by Arab writers. The learned men under Al-Mamûn began to apply themselves to astronomy in 813 a.d., following the system of Ptolemy; and the first observations that are properly their own were made by El-Bâthany in Mesopotamia, of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, in 882 A.D. The Arab astronomers also measured a degree on the plains of Mesopotamia, and Ibn Yûnus observed three eclipses at Cairo. The caliph’s librarian, Abu Jafar Muhammad Ben Musa, wrote a geographical work, now unfortunately lost, entitled Rasm el Arsi (“A Description of the World”), which is often referred to by subsequent writers as having been composed on the model of that of Ptolemy.

The earliest Arabian traveller whose observations have come down to us is the merchant Sulaiman, who embarked in the Persian Gulf and made several voyages to India and China, in the middle of the 9th century. Sulaiman’s information was supplemented by that collected by another writer named Abu Zaid; and, so far as India is concerned, this work is the most important that we possess before the grand epoch of the discoveries of Marco Polo. Next to Sulaiman followed the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor, whose narrative, though inserted in the Arabian Nights, also forms a distinct and separate work, which was translated into French by Μ. Langlès in 1814. Baron Walckenaer ascribes to the voyages of Sindbad a date about coincident with those of Sulaiman. Ibn Khurdadra, a fire-worshipper converted to Islam, who died in 912 a,d., also wrote an account of India. Al Masudi, a great traveller who knew all the countries between Spain and China, described the plains, mountains, and seas, the dynasties and peoples, in his Murûju-l Zahab (“Meadows of Gold ”). He died in 956. His contemporaries were Al Istakhri, who travelled through all the Mahometan countries, and wrote his Book of Climates in 950, and Ibn Haukal, whose Book of Roads and Kingdoms was written in 976. Al Idrisi was born at Ceuta, and after travelling far and wide, settled in Sicily, where he was induced by Roger II., the Norman king, to write his book on geography, the full title of which is The Delight of those who seek to wander through the Legions of the World. Finally Al Kazwini, who was a compiler from the works of Istakhri and Ibn Haukal in about 1263, brings us down to the...