or
Great Desert; of this, probably, sufficient is known to convince us that
its extent is such, that no country that would repay a traveller for his
fatigue and risk, is situated to the north of it. To the east of the Niger,
however, or rather along its course, and to the north of its course, as it
flows to the east, much remains to be explored; many geographical details
have been indeed gathered from the Mahomedan merchants of this part of
Africa, but these cannot entirely be trusted. The course and termination of
the Niger itself is still an unsolved problem.

Captain Scoresby, a most intelligent and active captain in the whale
fishery trade, has very lately succeeded in reaching the eastern coasts of
Greenland, and is disposed to think that the descendants of the Danish
colonists, of whose existence nothing is known since this coast was
blocked, up by ice at the beginning of the fifteenth century, still inhabit
it. The northern shores of Greenland, and its extent in this direction are
still unknown.

Notwithstanding the zeal and success with which the government of the
United States prosecute their discoveries to the west of the Mississippi,
there is still much unexplored country between that river and the Pacific
Ocean. It is possible that lands may lie within the antartic circle, of
which we have hitherto as little notion as we had of South Shetland ten
years ago; but if there are such, they must be most barren and
inhospitable. It is possible also, that, notwithstanding the care and
attention with which the great Pacific has been so repeatedly swept, there
may yet be islands in it undiscovered; but these, however fertile from soil
and climate, must be mere specks in the ocean.

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 f