New World.

On his return to Europe it was universally supposed that he had
reached the eastern parts of Asia, and that therefore his voyage
bad been theoretically successful. Columbus himself died in that
belief. But numerous voyages which were soon undertaken made
known the general contour of the American coast-line, and the
discovery of the Great South Sea by Balboa revealed at length the
true facts of the case, and the mistake into which both
Toscanelli and Columbus had fallen, that in a voyage to the West
the distance from Europe to Asia could not exceed the distance
passed over in a voyage from Italy to the Gulf of Guinea--a
voyage that Columbus had repeatedly made.

In his first voyage, at nightfall on September 13, 1492, being
then two and a half degrees east of Corvo, one of the Azores,
Columbus observed that the compass needles of the ships no longer
pointed a little to the east of north, but were varying to the
west. The deviation became more and more marked as the expedition
advanced. He was not the first to detect the fact of variation,
but he was incontestably the first to discover the line of no
variation. On the return-voyage the reverse was observed; the
variation westward diminished until the meridian in question was
reached, when the needles again pointed due north. Thence, as the
coast of Europe was approached, the variation was to the east.
Columbus, therefore, came to the conclusion that the line of no
variation was a fixed geographical line, or boundary, between the
Eastern and Western Hemispheres. In the bull of May, 1493, Pope
Alexander VI. accordingly adopted this line as the perpetual
boundary between the possessions of Spain and Portugal, in his
settlement of the disputes of those nations. Subsequently,
however, it was discovered that the line was moving eastward. It
coincided with the meridian of London in 1662.

By the papal bull the Portuguese possessions were limited to the
east of the line of no variation. Information derived from
certain Egyptian Jews had reached that government, that it was
possible to sail round the continent of Africa, there being at
its extreme south a cape which could be easily doubled. An
expedition of three ships under Vasco de Gama set sail, July 9,
1497; it doubled the cape on November 20th, and reached Calicut,
on the coast of India, May 19, 1498. Under the bull, this voyage
to the East gave to the Portuguese the right to the India trade.

Until the cape was doubled, the course of De Gama's ships was in
a general manner southward. Very soon, it was noticed that the
elevation of the pole-star above the horizon was diminishing,
and, soon after the equator was reached, that star had ceased to
be visible. Meantime other stars, some of them forming
magnificent constellations, had come into view--the stars of the
Southern Hemisphere. All this was in conformity to theoretical
expectations founded on the admission of the globular form of the
earth.

The political consequences that at once ensued placed the Papal
Government in a position of great embarrassment. Its traditions
and policy forbade it to admit any other than the flat figure of
the earth, as revealed in the Scriptures. Concealment of the
facts was impossible, sophistry was unavailing. Commercial
prosperity now left Venice as well as Genoa. The front of Europe
was changed. Maritime power had departed from the Mediterranean
countries, and passed to those upon the Atlantic coast.

But the Spanish Government did not submit to the advantage thus
gained by its commercial rival without an effort. It listened to
the representations of one Ferdinand Magellan, that India and the
Spice Islands could be reached by sailing to the west, if only a
strait or passage through what had now been recognized as "the
American Continent" could be discovered; and, if this should be
accomplished, Spain, under the papal bull, would have as good a
right to the India trade as Portugal. Under the command of
Magellan, an expedition of five ships, carrying two hundred and
thirty- seven men, was dispatched from Seville, August 10, 1519.

Magellan at once struck boldly for the South American coast,
hoping to find some cleft or passage through the continent by
which he might reach the great South Sea. For seventy days he was
becalmed on the line; his sailors were appalled by the
apprehension that they had drifted into a region where the winds
never blew, and that it was impossible for them to escape. Calms,
tempests, mutiny, desertion, could not shake his resolution.
After more than a year he discovered the strait which now bears
his name, and, as Pigafetti, an Italian, who was with him,
relates, he shed fears of joy when he found that it had pleased
God at length to bring him where he might grapple with the
unknown dangers of the South Sea, "the Great and Pacific Ocean."

Driven by famine to eat scraps of skin and leather with which his
rigging was here and there bound, to drink water that had gone
putrid, his crew dying of hunger and scurvy, this man, firm in
his belief of the globular figure of the earth, steered steadily
to the northwest, and for nearly four months never saw inhabited
land. He estimated that he had sailed over the Pacific not less
than twelve thousand miles. He crossed the equator, saw once more
the pole-star, and at length made land--the Ladrones. Here he met
with adventurers from Sumatra. Among these islands he was killed,
either by the savages or by his own men. His lieutenant,
Sebastian d'Elcano, now took command of the ship, directing her
course for the Cape of Good Hope, and encountering frightful
hardships. He doubled the cape at last, and then for the fourth
time crossed the equator. On September 7, 1522, after a voyage of
more than three years, he brought his ship, the San Vittoria, to
anchor in the port of St. Lucar, near Seville. She had
accomplished the greatest achievement in the history of the human
race. She had circumnavigated the earth.

The San Vittoria, sailing westward, had come back to her
starting-point. Henceforth the theological doctrine of the
flatness of the earth was irretrievably overthrown.

Five years after the completion of the voyage of Magellan, was
made the first attempt in Christendom to ascertain the size of
the earth. This was by Fernel, a French physician, who, having
observed the height of the pole at Paris, went thence northward
until be came to a place where the height of the pole was exactly
one degree more than at that city. He measured the distance
between the two stations by the number of revolutions of one of
the wheels of his carriage, to which a proper indicator bad been
attached, and came to the conclusion that the earth's
circumference is about twenty-four thousand four hundred and
eighty Italian miles.

Measures executed more and more carefully were made in many
countries: by Snell in Holland; by Norwood between London and
York in England; by Picard, under the auspices of the French
Academy of Sciences, in France. Picard's plan was to connect two
points by a series of triangles, and, thus ascertaining the
length of the arc of a meridian intercepted between them, to
compare it with the difference of latitudes found from celestial
observations. The stations were Malvoisine in the vicinity of
Paris, and Sourdon near Amiens. The difference of latitudes was
determined by observing the zenith-distances, of delta
Cassiopeia. There are two points of interest connected with
Picard's operation: it was the first in which instruments
furnished with telescopes were employed; and its result, as we
shall shortly see, was to Newton the first confirmation of the
theory of universal gravitation.

At this time it had become clear from mechanical considerations,
more especially such as had been deduced by Newton, that, since
the earth is a rotating body, her form cannot be that of a
perfect sphere, but must be that of a spheroid, oblate or
flattened at the poles. It would follow, from this, that the
length of a degree must be greater near the poles than at the
equator.

The French Academy resolved to extend Picard's operation, by
prolonging the measures in each direction, and making the result
the basis of a more accurate map of France. Delays, however, took
place, and it was not until 1718 that the measures, from Dunkirk
on the north to the southern extremity of France, were completed.
A discussion arose as to the interpretation of these measures,
some affirming that they indicated a prolate, others an oblate
spheroid; the former figure may be popularly represented by a
lemon, the latter by an orange. To settle this, the French
Government, aided by the Academy, sent out two expeditions to
measure degrees of the meridian--one under the equator, the other
as far north as possible; the former went to Peru, the latter to
Swedish Lapland. Very great difficulties were encountered by both
parties. The Lapland commission, however, completed its
observations long before the Peruvian, which consumed not less
than nine years. The results of the measures thus obtained
confirmed the theoretical expectation of the oblate form. Since
that time many extensive and exact repetitions of the observation
have been made, among which may be mentioned those of the English
in England and in India, and particularly that of the French on
the occasion of the introduction of the metric system of weights
and measures. It was begun by Delambre and Mechain, from Dunkirk
to Barcelona, and thence extended, by Biot and Arago, to the
island of Formentera near Minorea. Its length was nearly twelve
and a half degrees.

Besides this method of direct measurement, the figure of the
earth may be determined from the observed number of oscillations
made by a pendulum of invariable length in different latitudes.
These, though they confirm the foregoing results, give a somewhat
greater ellipticity to the earth than that found by the
measurement of degrees. Pendulums vibrate more slowly the nearer
they are to the equator. It follows, therefore, that they are
there farther from the centre of the earth.

From the most reliable measures that have been made, the
dimensions of the earth may be thus stated:

Greater or equatorial diameter ............. 7,925 miles.     
Less or polar diameter ......................7,899  "     
Difference or polar compression .............   26  "

Such was the result of the discussion respecting the figure and
size of the earth. While it was yet undetermined, another
controversy arose, fraught with even more serious consequences.
This was the conflict respecting the earth's position with regard
to the sun and the planetary bodies.

Copernicus, a Prussian, about the year 1507, had completed a book
"On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies." He had journeyed to
Italy in his youth, had devoted his attention to astronomy, and
had taught mathematics at Rome. From a profound study of the
Ptolemaic and Pythagorean systems, he had come to a conclusion in
favor of the latter, the object of his book being to sustain it.