Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/201

Rh F1 lCl1 3]] l" )1 up- izey. ‘r ress if Wi-
 * aI-n.

SEVENTEENTII CENTURY.] made, and New Zealand (at ﬁrst called Staten Land) was discovered o11 the 14th of December. Tasman communi- cated with the natives and anchored in what he called 1lurderer’s Bay. From New Zealand it was resolved to steer eastward to longitude 220°, and then north. On this course the ships arrived at Tongatabu, one of the Friendly 1slands of Cook; in April 1643 they were off the north coast of New Guinea; and on June 15 Tasman returned to Batavia. In 1644 Tasman made a second voyage to effect a more full discovery of New Guinea. The French directed their enterprise more in the. direction of North America than of the Indies. One of their most distinguished naval worthies was Samuel Champlain, a native of Brouage in Saintonge, whose friend and patron was Aymar de Chastes, governor of Dieppe, a devoted follower of Henry IV. Champlain after the close of the war with the League in Brittany, in which he served, made a remarkable journey through Mexico and the West India Islands from 1599 to 1602, and on his return he found that M. de Chastes was, undeterred by previous failures, resolved to undertake the establishment of a colony in Canada. Champlain was sent on a voyage of reconnaissance, and on his return he found that the Sieur de Chastes was dead. In 1603 the Sieur de Monts was named vice-admiral of the coasts of Acadia, and Champlain sailed with him from ])ieppe. He was for some years engaged in surveying all the coasts of Acadia and Cape Breton, and in 1607 he re- turned to France with De Monts. In the following year another attempt was made. Champlain, with a colleague named Du Pont Grave, sailed to the St Lawrence, and on July 3, 1608, they ﬁrst arrived at Quebec. In 1609 Champlain ascended the Iroquois to the lake which still bears his name. By 1611 a regula1' colony was established at Quebec ; and in 1620 Champlain was installed as governor. He died towards the end of the year 1635. Champlain was an able navigator and a resolute explorer, and he made a very large addition to the knowledge of Canada and Acadia (Novia Scotia). The last expedition of the 17th century was purely scien- tiﬁc. In 1699 Edmund Halley, the astronomer-royal, in command of the “ Paramour Pink,” undertook a voyage to improve the knowledge of longitude, and of the variation of the compass. The results of his voyage were the con- struction of a variation chart, and proposals for ﬁnding the longitude by occultations of ﬁxed stars. During the 17th century very considerable progress was made in the art of navigation, and in systematizing and delineating the vast mass of material that was accumulated by the ceaseless activity of explorers. The Dutch took the lead as map-makers. Mercator invented the useful projec- tion which bears his name; and Ortelius, Hondius, and Hulsius compiled a series of valuable maps. In ﬁnding the latitude at sea, the astrolabe very generally gave place to the cross-staff, because the graduation of the latter was larger and more easily read off. The cross—statf was a very simple instrument, consisting of a graduated pole with cross pieces, called transversaries (of which there were four used according to the altitude), also graduated, which were ﬁtted to work on it. The bearings of the sun were taken by co1n- pass, to ascertain when it was 11ear the meridian ; then the end of the long staff was placed close to the observer’s eye, and the transversary moved until one end exactly touched the horizon, and the other the sun’s centre. This was con- tinned until the sun dipped, when the meridian altitude was obtained. The back-staff was an improvement on the cross-staff, invented by the great Arctic navigator John Davis. It was ﬁtted with a reﬂector, and it was thus the ﬁrst rough idea of the principle of the quadrant and sextant. The cross-staff was used for low altitudes, because both ends of the transversary could easily be seen at the same GEOGRAPHY 187 time, and the astrolabe for high altitudes. With the inven- tion of these instruments came instructions for their use, and for working out observations. In England the ﬁrst of these was The Old 1-i’uttcr of the Sea, printed in 1490. Then followed the S'ermz(m’s Sccwls of John Davis, and A Ifegi-nzczzt of the Sea, co7zlcdn2'ng very 7zecessm*3/ illatters, will; a pe)_'fc'ct Sea Card, by Thomas Hood, published in 1596. Hood also sold compasses constructed on Mr Norman’s principle, near the Minories. These manuals contained deﬁnitions, treatises on the use of the sea card and compass, tables of declination and rules for applying it, rules for dead reckonings and longitude, and instructions in the use of instruments. Latitude was obtained by observation, but longitude had usually to be reckoned on the chart from the Finding meridian of Grand Canary, which in those days was used 101181t11de by all civilized countries. The differences of time between the eclipses of the moon at the place of the observer and the place for which it was calculated in the eplzemerides for that day was another method in use of ﬁnding the differ- ence of longitude. Mariners were also provided with tables giving the number of miles in a degree of longitude for every degree of latitude. Much attention was bestowed upon the phenomena of the variation and dip of the magnetic needle. tobert Norman, the hydrographer, dis- covered the dip or inclination of the needle in 1576, and in Variation 1581 he observed the variation of the compass at London, 0f 00m- and found it to be 11° 15' E. In the same year his Dis- Pass‘ com's«=. of the .l[a_q7zcl or Loadstone was published by Ballard. In 1580 Mr Borough, comptroller of the navy, found the variation of the compass at Limehouse‘_to be 11° 19' E. It may be observed here that in 1657 there was no variation at London, and that it moved westerly until 1815, when it was 24° 27' IV. It is now returning eastwards. By means of these rough instruments and calculations our Elizabethan navigators and their contemporaries suc- ceeded in delineating the vast regions that were discovered. Thus the sum of human knowledge was augmented, while men's minds were enlarged, and the wealth and prosperity of nations were increased, through the provision of safe guides by which lands and seas could be traversed, and distant countries visited. In the 18th century, to a far greater extent than had ever been the case before, geography began to be cultivated for its own sake, and expeditions were ﬁtted out with the objects of discovery and of acquiring knowledge. The same objects also generally formed part of these enterprises which were avowedly undertaken for conquest, in the search of wealth, or from motives of religious zeal. The improvement of scientific apparatus naturally went Board of The great L°”S‘t“d°- hand in hand with the progress of discovery. desideratum was the means of ﬁnding the longitude; and it was the creation of a commission for the discovery of longitude in 1713 which, so far as England is concerned, gave the greatest stimulus to inventions connected with geogra.phical research. To the Board of Longitude is due the conception of the Nautical Almanac, and the establish- ment of a surveying branch of the naval service. The Nautical Almanac ﬁrst appeared in 176 7, under the auspices Nautical of Dr Maskelyne, the astronomer—royal, who, by furnishing Almanac- tablcs of lunar distances, supplied another means of ﬁnding the longitude. The invention by Hadley, in 1731, of the quadrant for use at sea, which entirely superseded the astrolabe and cross-staff, was a still greater improvement ; and it was soon followed by better instruments on the same principle—the sextants of Dollond and Troughton. _ work of travellers on land also became more accurate In proportion as instruments and maps were improved. Early explorers by land were content with itineraries and maps which only indicated distances. The introductlon of observations by compass bearings was an important improve- The Sextant.