Volume Xviii Part 26 (1/2)
The last excursion of Mr. Burckhardt was from Cairo to Mount Sinai and the eastern head of the Red Sea. This journey was published in 1822, along with the travels in Syria and the Holy Land; the latter of which he accomplished while he was preparing himself at Aleppo for his proposed journey into the interior of Africa. These travels, therefore, are prior in date to those in Nubia, though they were published afterwards.
He spent nearly three, years in Syria: his most important geographical discoveries in this country relate to the nature of the district between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Elana; the extent, conformation, and detailed topography of the Haouran; the situation of Apanea on the river Orontes, which was one of the most important cities of Syria under the Macedonian Greeks; the site of Petreea; and the general structure of the peninsula of Mount Sinai. Perhaps the most original and important of these ill.u.s.trations of ancient geography is that which relates to the Elanitic Gulph: its extent and form were previously so little known, that it was either entirely omitted, or very erroneously laid down in maps. From what he observed here, there is good reason to believe that the Jordan once discharged itself into the Red Sea; thus confirming the truth of that convulsion mentioned and described in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis, which interrupted the coa.r.s.e of this river; converted the plain in which Sodom and Gomorrah stood into a lake, and changed the valley to the southward of this district into a sandy desert.
But Mr. Burckhardt, considering all these excursions, and their consequent numerous and important accessions to geographical knowledge, as only preludes to the grand expedition for which he had expressly come to the East, still looked forward to the interior of Africa. This, however, he was not destined to reach; for while at Cairo, waiting for a caravan, which was to proceed by Mourzouck,--a. route which he had long decided on as the most likely to answer his purpose,--he was suddenly seized with a dysentery, on the 5th of October, 1817, and died on the 15th.
Travellers in. Egypt and Nubia have been numerous since the time of Mr.
Burckhardt; but as they chiefly directed their investigations and inquiries to the antiquities of the country, they do not come within our proper notice; we shall therefore merely mention the names of Belzoni, (whose antiquarian discoveries have been so numerous and splendid,) Mr. Salt, Mr.
Bankes, &c. To this latter gentleman, however, geography is also indebted for important additions to its limits; or, rather, for having ill.u.s.trated ancient geography. He penetrated, as we have already mentioned, as far as the second cataract: he visited some of the most celebrated scenes in Arabia, and made an excursion to Waadi Mooza, or the Valley of Moses. He also visited Carrac; but the most important discovery of this gentleman relates to the site of the ancient Petraea, which was also visited by Burckhardt. Onr readers will recollect that this city has been particularly noticed in our digression on the early commerce of the Arabians, as the common centre for the caravans in all ages; and that we traced its ancient history as far down as there were any notices of it. Its ruins Mr. Bankes discovered in those of Waadi Mooza, a village in the valley of the same name.
Since Mr. Burckhardt travelled, geographical discoveries have been made in this part of the world by Messrs. Ritchie and Lyon, Lord Belmore and Dr.
Richardson, Messrs. Waddington and Hanbury, Messrs. Caillaud and Drovetti, Sir Archibald Edmonstone, Sir Frederick Henniker, and by an American of the name of English. The travels of Messrs. Ritchie and Lyon were confined to Fezzan, and are chiefly curious for the notices they give, derived from native merchants, of the course of the Niger, By means of the travels of Lord Belmore and Dr. Richardson, the lat.i.tudes and longitudes on the Nile have been corrected from a.s.souan to the confines of Dongola. Mr. Waddington and Mr. Hanbury, taking advantage of an expedition sent into Ethiopia by the pacha of Egypt, examined this river four hundred miles beyond the place to which Burckhardt advanced. The travels of the two French gentlemen extended to the Oasis of Thebes and Dakel, and the deserts situated to the east and west of the Thebaid. In the Thebaic Oasis some very interesting remains of antiquity were discovered: the great Oasis was well known to the ancients; but the Thebaic Oasis has seldom been visited in modern times.
Brown and Poncet pa.s.sed through its longest extent, but did not see the ruins observed by Mr. Caillaud.
This gentleman, who was employed by the pacha to search for gold, silver, and precious stones, after a residence of five months at Sennaar, traversed the province of Fazocle, and followed the Arrek, till it entered the kingdom of Bertot. At a place called Singue, in the kingdom of Dar-foke, which is the southern boundary of Bertot, situated on the tenth parallel of lat.i.tude, and five days' journey to the westward of the confines of Abyssinia, the conquests of Ishmaei Pacha terminated. Only short notices of these travels of Mr. Caillaud have as yet been published.
Sir A. Edmonstone's first intention was to visit the Thebaic Oasis; but understanding from Mr. Belzoni that Mr. Caillaud had already been there, but that there was another Oasis to the westward, which had never been visited by any European, he resolved to proceed thither. This Oasis was also visited by Drovetti much about I he same time: he calls it the Oasis of Dakel. It seems to have escaped the notice of all the ancient authors examined by Sir Archibald, except Olympiodorus. Speaking of the Thebaic Oasis, he mentions an interior and extensive one, lying opposite to the other, one hundred miles apart, which corresponds with the actual distance between them.
The American traveller accompanied the expedition of the pacha of Egypt as far as Sennaar. He commences the account of his voyage up the Nile at the second cataract; and as far as the pyramids of Meroe, where the voyage of Messrs. Waddington and Hanbury terminated, his accounts correspond with what they give. He did not, however, follow the great bend of the river above Dongola: this he describes as 250 miles long, and full of rocks and rapid. He again reached the Nile, having crossed the peninsula in a direct line, at Shendi. Near this place he discovered the remains of a city, temples, and fifty-four pyramids, which are supposed, by a writer in the Quarterly Review, to be the ruins of the celebrated Meroc, as their position agrees with that a.s.signed them by a draughtsman employed by Mr.
Bankes. The army halted on the western bank of the Nile, opposite Halfaia: about five hours' march above this place the Bahr el Abiad, or White River, flows into the Bahr el Azreck, or Nile of Bruce. In thirteen days from the junction of these two rivers, the army, marching along the left, or western branch of the Azreck, reached Sennaar.
In the year 1817, Delia Cella, an Italian physician, accompanied the army of the bashaw of Tripoli as far as Bomba, on the route towards Egypt, and near the frontiers of that country. He had thus an opportunity ”of visiting one of the oldest and most celebrated of the Greek colonies, established upwards of seven hundred years before the birth of Christ; and in being the first European to follow the footsteps of Cato round the sh.o.r.es of the Syrtis, and to explore a region untrodden by Christian foot since the expulsion of the Romans, the Huns, and the Vandals, by the enterprising disciples of Mahomet.” In this journey he necessarily pa.s.sed the present boundary between Tripoli and Bengaze, the same which was anciently the boundary between Carthage and Cyrene; and our author confirms the account of Sall.u.s.t, that neither river nor mountain marks the confines. He also confirms the description given by Herodotus of the dreadful storms of sand that frequently arise and overwhelm the caravans in this part of the Syrtis. At the head of the Syrtis the ground is depressed, and this depression, our author supposes, continues to the Great Desert. Soon after he left this barren country, he entered Cyrenaica, the site of Cyrene: that most ancient and celebrated colony of the Greeks was easily ascertained by its magnificent ruins. From Cyrene the army marched to Derna, and from this to the gulf of Bomba, an extensive arm of the sea, where the expedition terminated.
Such are the most recent discoveries in this portion of Africa.
The settlement of the Cape of Good Hope, originally established by the Dutch, and at present in possession of the English, was naturally the point from which European travellers set out to explore the southern parts of Africa. Their progress. .h.i.therto has not been great, though, as far as they have advanced, the information they have acquired of the face of the country, its productions, the tribes which inhabit it, and their habits, manners, &c. may be regarded as full and accurate. The princ.i.p.al travellers who have visited this part of Africa, and from whose travels the best information may be obtained of the settlement of the Cape, and of the country to the north of it for about 900 miles, are Kolbein, Sparman, Le Vaillant, Barrow, Lichtenstein, La Trobe, Campbell, and Burcheli. To the geography of the east coast of Africa, and of the adjacent districts, little or no addition has been made for a very considerable length of time.
II. The discoveries in Asia may in general be divided into those which the vast possessions of the Russians in this quarter of the globe, and the corresponding interest which they felt to become better acquainted with them, induced them to make, and into those to which the English were stimulated, and which they were enabled to perform, from the circ.u.mstance of their vast, important, and increasing possessions in Hindostan.
The most important and instructive travels which spring from the first source, are those of Bell of Antermony, Pallas, Grnelin, Guldenstedt, Lepechin, &c. Bell was a Scotchman, attached to the Russian service: his work, which was published about the middle of the last century, contains an account of the emba.s.sy sent by Peter the Great to the emperor of China, and of another emba.s.sy into Persia; of an expedition to Derbent by the Russian army, and of a journey to Constantinople. Of the route in all these directions he gives an interesting and accurate account, as well as of the manners, &c. of the people. Indeed, it is a valuable work, especially that portion of it which conducts us through the central parts of Asia,--an immense district, which, as we have already remarked, is not much better known at present, (at least considerable portions of it,) than it was three or four centuries ago. The travels of Pallas, &c. were undertaken by order of the Russian government, for the purpose of gaining a fuller and more accurate account of the provinces of that immense empire, especially those to the south, which, from climate, soil, and productions were most valuable, and most capable of improvement.
The English possessions in Hindostan have led the way to two sets of discoveries, or rather advancements in geographical knowledge: one which was derived from the journies frequently made overland from India to Europe; and the other, which was derived from emba.s.sies, &c. from Calcutta to the neighbouring kingdoms. In general, however, the journies overland from India, having been undertaken expressly for the purpose of expedition, and moreover being through countries which required the utmost caution on the part of the travellers to preserve them from danger, did not admit of much observation being made, or much information being acquired, respecting the districts that were pa.s.sed through. The travels of Jackson, Forster, and Fitzclarence, are perhaps as valuable as any which have been given to the public respecting the route from India to Europe, and the countries, and their inhabitants, pa.s.sed through in this route.
From the emba.s.sies and the wars of the British East India Company in Hindostan, we have derived much valuable information respecting Persia, Thibet, Ava, Caubul, &c.; and from their wars, as well as from the inst.i.tution of the Asiatic Society, and the facilities which their conquests afforded to travellers, the whole of the peninsula of Hindostan, as well as the country to the north of it, as far as Cashmere and the Himaleh mountains, may be regarded as fully explored. Perhaps the most valuable accession to geographical knowledge through the English conquests, relates to these mountains. They seem to have been known to Pliny under the name of Imaus: they are described by Plotemy; and they were crossed by some of the Jesuit missionaries about the beginning of the seventeenth century; but they were not thoroughly explored till the beginning of the nineteenth.
Mr. Moorcroft was the first European, after the missionaries, who penetrated into the plains of Tartary through these mountains. The fullest account, however, of the singular countries which lie among them, is given by Mr. Frazer, who in 1814 pa.s.sed in a straight line, in a direction of this chain, between 60 and 70 miles, and also visited the sources of the Ganges.
Our commerce with China for tea, and the hope of extending that commerce to other articles, produced, towards the end of the last century and the beginning of this, two emba.s.sies to China, from both of which, but especially from the first, much additional information has been gained respecting this extensive country, and its singular inhabitants; so that, regarding it and them, from these emba.s.sies, and the works of the Jesuit missionaries, we possess all the knowledge which we can well expect to derive, so long as the Chinese are so extremely jealous of strangers.
The British emba.s.sies to China, besides making us better acquainted with this country, added no little to our information respecting those places which were visited in going to and returning from China. Perhaps the most important correction of geography is that which was made by Captains Maxwell and Hall, who took out the second emba.s.sy: we allude to what they ascertained respecting the kingdom of Corea. They found a bay, which, according to the charts of this country, would be situated 120 miles in the interior; and at the same time they ascertained, that along the southern coast of Corea there was an archipelago of more than 1000 islands. These discoveries; the valuable additions which were made during the voyage of Captain Maxwell to the geography and hydrography of the Yellow Sea; the correction of the vague and incorrect notions which were long entertained respecting the isles of Jesso and the Kuriles, by the labours of La Perouse, Broughton, Krusentein, &c., and the full and minute information given to the public respecting Java, and other parts of the southern Indian archipelago, by Raffles, Craufurd, &c. seem to leave little to be added to our geographical knowledge of the eastern and southeastern portions of Asia.
III. We come now to America;--and though Africa is one of the most ancient seats of the human race, and of civilization and science, and America has been discovered only about 350 years, yet we know much more respecting the coasts and interior of the latter than of the former portion of the globe.
Although the Spaniards and Portuguese, who, till very lately, possessed nearly the whole of South America, guarded their possessions strictly from the curious intrusion of foreigners, and were themselves very sparing in giving to the world the information respecting them which they must have acquired,--yet, even during their power there, the geography of this part of America was gradually developed and extended; the face of the country; the great outline of those immense mountains, which, under the torrid zone, are visited by the cold of the Pole; the nature of the vast plains which lie between the offsets of these mountains; and the general direction of the rivers, not less remarkable for their size than the mountains and plains, were generally known. The geography of South America, however, taking the term in the most philosophical and comprehensive sense, has been princ.i.p.ally enriched within these few years, by the labours of Humboldt and his fellow-traveller Bompland, of Depons, Koster, Prince Maximilian, Lucc.o.c.k, Henderson, and by those Englishmen who joined the Spanish Americans during their struggle with the mother country. From the observations, enquiries, and researches of these travellers, our information respecting all those parts of South America which const.i.tuted the Spanish and Portuguese dominions there, especially of Mexico, Terra Firma, Brazil, and Buenos Ayres, and generally the eastern and middle portions, has been much extended, as well as rendered more accurate and particular. Humboldt, especially, has left little to be gleaned by any future traveller, from any of those countries which he has visited and described.
The rapid and wonderful increase in the territories and inhabitants of the United States, has necessarily laid open the greater part of North America to our acquaintance. The United States, limited in their wish and endeavours to extend themselves on the north by the British possessions there, and on the south by the Spanish territories, and moreover drawn towards the interior and the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific by the grand natural navigation which the Mississippi and its numerous streams afford for inland commerce, and by the commercial access to the wealth of the East which the possession of the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific would open to them, have pushed their territories towards the west. First, the Alleghany Mountains, a feeble barrier to an encreasing population, and a most enterprising as well as unsettled people, were pa.s.sed; then the Mississippi was reached and crossed; and at present the government of the United States are preparing the way for extending their territories gradually to the Western Ocean itself, and for spreading their population, as they go westwards, to the north and the south, as far as their limits, will admit.
All those countries, over which they have spread themselves, are of course now well known, princ.i.p.ally from the accounts published by Europeans, and especially Englishmen, who have been tempted to explore them, or to settle there. The government of the United States itself has not been backward in setting on foot exploratory travels into the immense districts to the west of the Mississippi: to these enterprizes they seem to have been particularly directed and stimulated by the acquisition of Louisiana from France, a country ”rich and varied in its soil, almost inexhaustible in natural resources, and almost indefinite in extent.”
This acquisition was made in the year 1803, and within four years of this period, three exploratory expeditions were sent out by the United States.