of coal there can be no doubt, and the river running over what we saw would not be a difficulty, as the shaft could be sunk on either bank.

I have several reasons for supposing Champion Bay safe during winter, although open to the northward and westward; the first is the low sand beach, then the vegetation growing close to the high water mark, say 20 yards, whilst all the beach to the southward of Point Moore was blown into high ridges, and was generally about 30 or 40 yards wide: from all I observed I should say that if northerly gales reach there, they must be very much more moderate; but in Port Grey there was evident proof of the effect of southerly winds.

The small snug harbour in Port Grey is quite sheltered, and admirably fitted for small vessels loading or unloading.

There was a great want of timber over the whole country; but I do not think there is any doubt that water could be obtained anywhere.

Fremantle, 31 Dec. 1846.

VI.-Memorandum respecting an old Globe (supposed date about 1520) in the Public Library of Frankfort-on-Maine; brought there from a Monastery about sixty years ago. By Mr. H. BLANCHARD.

DATE of discoveries (America).

America.- Columbus (born 1435) left Palos on the 3rd of August, 1492; by the 7th of October he had sailed 750 leagues to the westward of the Canaries, and expected to find the island of Cipangi (Japan). He discovered land that evening, viz., St. Salvador, one of the Bahamas; he arrived at Cuba on the 28th of October, still believing himself to be in Asia; and, coasting the N. side of Hispaniola, returned to Spain.

On the 25th of September, 1493, he sailed on his second voyage from Cadiz; made Dominica and Guadaloupe, surveyed Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Cuba, and returned.

On the 20th of May, 1498, he sailed from St. Lucar on his third voyage; made Trinidad and the main land adjacent, thence bearing up for Hispaniola, he returned to Spain under arrest. During this voyage Ojeda sailed from Spain (having Amerigo Vespucci on board his ship) on a voyage in which he coasted from Trinidad to near Darien.

On the 9th of May, 1502, Columbus sailed on his fourth voyage from Cadiz, his attention being wholly directed to discover the strait which he supposed to exist between N. and S. America. He

reached St. Domingo; thence sailed to the Bay of Honduras, near Truxillo. On his passage down he met a large canoe, which urged him to proceed westward, where he would find a rich and cultivated country (Yucatan and Mexico), he coasted the Musquito shore from Truxillo to the Bay of Panama near Darien, thence he returned to Cuba; and to St. Lucar in Spain, on the 7th of November, 1504; believing he had been very near the mouth of the Ganges. He died the 20th of May, 1506, believing to the last that he had discovered the regions of the East, and that Cuba and Terra firma were the eastern parts of Asia.

Vincente Pinzon sailed early in December, 1499, from Palos. Passing the Cape de Verdes, he steered S.W., and in 8° S. lat. made Cape St. Augustine, Brazil; thence coasting N., he discovered the mouths of the Amazon and Orinoco, and, passing the Boca del Drago, proceeded to Hispaniola, and thence returned to Spain, arriving in September, 1500.

In 1506, and again in 1508, Vincente Pinzon undertook expeditions to find the strait or passage supposed by Columbus to lead from the Atlantic to a southern ocean; no such passage, however, exists.

Ojeda sailed on a second voyage in 1502, and explored the Gulf of Paria to the Bahia Honda. He sailed again in 1509 with a commission to found colonies between Paria and Darien (on this expedition Pizarro accompanied him). The following year Nunez de Balboa followed him, and succeeded to his command; and, hearing a report of the South Sea, led a party (including Pizarro) across the isthmus, and discovered it the 26th of September, 1513. He embarked on it, visited the Pearl Islands in the Bay of Panama; and, receiving information that the coast extended far to the N., and that there was a large and civilized nation to the S., he returned to Darien.

Subsequently (about 1518) Pedrarias built Panama on the South Sea, and in November, 1524, Pizarro embarked on his expedition for Peru.

The recent researches of the Danish Antiquarian Society have shown that the Northmen of the tenth and eleventh centuries visited Greenland, Newfoundland, and probably as far as Nantucket; in the thirteenth century they appear to have reached further S., but no evidence appears of these voyages being known to Columbus.

John Cabot sailed on a voyage of discovery from Bristol (during Columbus's second voyage) in 1494, and returned on seeing Newfoundland. He obtained a patent from Henry VII., under which his son, Sebastian, sailed in May, 1497, in search of a N.W. passage to India. He reached 67° N., finding the sea

quite open; but his men mutinying, he bore to the S. till he came to 38° N. on the coast, which he expressly says was afterwards called Florida, having seen the continent of America, which Columbus only visited the following year.

In 1512 Don Juan Ponce de Leon took possession of Florida, and so named it on behalf of the King of Spain.

Sebastian Cabot subsequently entered the service of the King of Spain, in which he discovered the River Plata, and sailed up it 360 miles; on this he was made Grand Master of Spain, but he afterwards returned to the English service.

Cabral sailing from Portugal for the East Indies in 1500, stood so far to the westward that he fell in with land, which proved to be the Brazils. They coasted it S. to Porto Seguro in 15° S. lat.

Magellan sailed from Seville on the 10th of August, 1519, declaring his belief that there must be a passage to the S. similar to what he believed Sebastian Cabot had found to the N.; he wintered in 49° S., and first observed the Patagonians. He entered the South Sea on the 28th of November, 1520; then sailing three months and twenty days in a N.E. direction, he arrived at the Ladrones on the 10th of March, 1521. Here he was killed, and his ship arrived at San Lucar the 7th September, 1522.

Hernandez de Cordova sailed from Havannah on discovery the 8th of February, 1517; and, passing Cape Catoche, proceeded along the W. coast of Yucatan to Campeachy and Potanchan, but losing many of his men by an attack of the natives, he returned to

Cuba.

John Grijalva sailed from Cuba on the 8th of May, 1518; following the same course, he coasted the Bay of Campeachy and Mexico to San Juan d'Ulloa, and returned to Cuba.

Hernando Cortes sailed from Havannah on the 10th of February, 1519; and, making conquests along the coast, founded Villa Rica de Vera Cruz, and sent his first tribute and dispatch to Spain on the 16th of July, 1519.

Remarks.-The annexed memoranda of the discoveries made during the thirty years immediately following the discovery of America by Columbus, together with the few appended remarks on the different voyages and travels which had indirectly brought information of the existence of distant countries, will probably be the best means of forming an opinion of the date of the globe alluded to.

At the period it was made, information frequently travelled slowly, but considerable research must have been used to form it. In assuming the date of 1520 as about the period, that year embraces the knowledge of all that Columbus ever attained-of the discovery of the South Sea by Nunez de Balboa-of the River

Plata by Sebastian Cabot-and of the discovery by Cordova of Cape Catoche and Campeachy in 1517; but not of the discoveries of Magellan, who sailed in 1519 and returned in 1522; nor of Cortes, who discovered Mexico in 1519; nor of Pizarro, who left the infant colony of Panama on his expedition for Peru in 1524.

VII. Observations upon M. d'Abbadie's Account of his Discovery of the Sources of the White Nile, and upon certain Objections and Statements in relation thereto, by Dr. Beke. By FREDERICK AYRTON, Esq., F.R.G.S., and Member of the Geographical Society of Paris. Abridged.

[Read January 24th and February 14th.]

"CAPUT Nili quærere" has so long been accepted as a phrase significant of the futility of attempts to discover the sources of the famous river of Egypt, that, perhaps, one ought not to be surprised that a sudden announcement of success, even though professing to be founded upon the positive testimony of personal observation, should be met by incredulousness. Nor is it astonishing that ancient hypothesis, resting on conjecture (which, if experience had failed to confirm, it had equally failed to contradict), should still find an advocate unwilling, on the first summons, to surrender its easily enjoyed speculative conclusions to the stubborn dominion of facts; although these facts are broad and plain, and supported in their credibility by the ready manner in which they range by the side of collateral data, and reconcile the jarring opinions which have prevailed upon this key-stone of African geography from the time of Ptolemy Claudius, who first essayed to fix it definitively, to that of M. d'Abbadie's having announced his final discovery of its true position. But the question, as is well known, had an interest long anterior to the time of Ptolemy the geographer: Sesostris, Cambyses, Alexander, Ptolemy Philadelphus, Cæsar, Nero, and not a few besides, who have sought to leave for the chaplet of their future fame a record of their discovery of the sources of the Nile, have failed in attaining this object of their ambition. For thirty centuries had men set themselves in vain to solve this great geographical problem; and what neither the authority of kings nor the researches of philosophers could previously effect, two private travellers, aided by no influence, by nought save their own personal means, intelligence, patience, perseverance, untiring energy and enterprise, have at last accomplished.

Such were my impressions upon first learning the great dis