Page:Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol 1.djvu/371

authority, while of more than half the islands on the earth's surface we have no more accurate knowledge, than the fact, that they exist in clusters of uncertain number and position, and of very dangerous approach. Nay, even in the great high-ways of commerce and of navigation, there are rocks and sandbanks and other perils, as to the ex- istence and locality of which the evidence is balanced with most per- plexing equality. Such things ought not to be in this age of philoso- phical research, and in a department more especially which admits of exact ascertainment. We look to the labours of the new Geographical Society to dispel the mist of uncertainty which now covers so much of the earth's surface, and by little and little to bring out the whole in clear and well-defined and undisputed outlines. Those who aid in this work, may be assured of the approving cheer with which the results of their labours will be hailed by all classes and all nations ; for geo- graphy is a science, the benefit from advancing which none are so obtuse or so bigotted as not to acknowledge. As a science, geography is entirely of modern growth. It has followed upon the advances made in the art of navigation ; and to this circum- stance only can we ascribe, the comparative backwardness of the an- cients in the department, and the little they have left that is of value in it. Before the discovery of the compass and the improvements made in the construction of ships, and the numberless inventions which have made navigation a means of access to the remotest corners of the far dis- tant ocean, the geographer's materials were confined to itineraries, and the confused records of military expeditions, and of laborious land-journies. Then mountains and rivers, and interior seas, deserts and lakes, were the objects of first discovery. Now we have the coasts and outward appear- ance, and the entire size of a continent thoroughly ascertained and de- lineated before we know any thing whatsoever of the interior. With the advance of navigation came the necessity of providing the means of accurately knowing, whereabout on the earth's surface the winds and. waves had carried the adventurous voyager. Hence the discovery of instruments for determining latitudes and longitudes with a precision be- fore undreamt of, and hence the ability to assign a place on the general map of the earth's surface to every object that presented itself to the navigator's observation. The refined and scientific surveys on land, undertaken for the correct determination of the earth's figure, would never have been set on foot but for the discoveries previously made by navigation. They are but an extension of that science, and are effected through an application of the same intruments and materials, though these are prepared and t 2