But though comparatively little of the surface of the globe is now utterly unknown, yet even of those countries with which we are best acquainted, much remains to be ascertained, before the geography of them can justly be regarded as complete.  Perhaps we are much less deficient and inaccurate in our knowledge of the natural history of the globe, than in its geography, strictly so called; that is, in the extent, direction, latitudes and longitudes, direction and elevation of mountains, rise, course, and termination of rivers, &c.  How grossly erroneous geography was till very lately, in some even of its most elementary parts, and those, too, in relation to what ought to have been the most accurately known portion of Europe, may be judged from these two facts,—­that till near the close of the last century, the distance from the South Foreland, in Kent, to the Land’s End, was laid down in all the maps of England nearly half a degree greater than it actually is; and that, as we have formerly noticed, “the length of the Mediterranean was estimated by the longitudes of Ptolemy till the eighteenth century, and that it was curtailed of nearly twenty-five degrees by observation, no farther back than the reign of Louis XIV.”

To speak in a loose and general manner, the Romans, at the height of their conquests, power, and geographical knowledge, were probably acquainted with a part of the globe about equal in extent to that of which we are still ignorant; but their empire embraced a fairer and more valuable portion than we can expect to find in those countries which remain to reward the enterprise of European travellers.  The fertile regions and the beautiful climate of the south of Europe, of the north of Africa, and above all of Asia Minor, present a picture which we can hardly expect will be approached, certainly will not be surpassed, under the burning heats of central Africa, or even the more mitigated heats of the farther peninsula of India.  The short and easy access of all portions of the Roman Empire to the ocean, gave them advantages which must be denied to the hitherto unexplored districts in the interior of Asia and Africa.  The farther peninsula of India is infinitely better situated in this respect.

At that very remote period, when sacred and profane history first displays the situation, and narrates the transactions of the human race, the countries, few in number, and comparatively of small extent, that were washed by the waters of the Mediterranean, comprised the whole of the earth which was then known.  Asia Minor, which possessed the advantage of lying not only on this sea, but also on the Euxine, and which is moreover level in its surface, and fertile in its soil, seems to have been the first additional portion of the earth that became thoroughly known.  The commercial enterprize of the Phoenicians, and their colonists the Carthaginians,—­the conquests of Alexander the Great, and of the Romans, gradually extended the knowledge of the earth in all directions,