A GRAMMAR OF MODERN GEOGRAPHY, WITH AN INTRODUCTION TO ASTRONOMY PUBLISHED BY S. ARROWSMITH, SOHO SQUARE; BOOKSELLER AND PUBLISHER TO THE COLLEGE, LUDGATE STREET. 1832. [Price 6s. bound; or with the Maps, 12 s. bound.] PREFACE. THE following Grammar of Modern Geography has been drawn up with a view of condensing as much information as possible in its small compass, without rendering the whole of it necessary to be studied in order to obtain a connected account of the present states, people, and great cities, of the world. Two kinds of type have been, therefore, employed. The larger of these alone is designed to be learned by the younger Students, and when they have thus gone once through the book, such portions of the remainder may be consulted as are found convenient: or, it might not be without advantage, even in the Learner's first progress through the Geography, to use the smaller type by way of a reading lesson. The whole has been likewise divided into Sections; so that, independent of typographical arrangement, any particular paragraph relating to more interesting matters may be learned at pleasure. The questions which are invented in the "Praxis" attached to this volume, in addition to their being synthetically arranged, are also numbered; hence, likewise, any series of them may be readily given to the Student either for oral or written answers. XIX. Kingdoms of Persia and Cabul or Afghanistan XXI. Trans-Gangetic India-Australasia-Polynesia XXII. Russian Empire in Asia-Independent Tartary XXVI. Pachalic of Egypt-Nubian States-Kingdom of Abyssinia 342 XXVII. South Eastern Africa Madagascar-Comoro Is., &c.— Cape of Good Hope-Lower Guinea-Coast of Guinea -Senegambia-Soudan or Nigritia-Tibboo and Tua- XXIX. British America-Greenland and Iceland-Russian Ame- rica-United States 390 XXXI. Colombia-Guyana—Brazil-Peru-Upper Peru or Bo- XXXII. The Use of the Globes 412 425 CHAPTER I. SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE. 1. WE find it recorded in the Sacred History of the Creation, That God made Lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth; to divide the day from the night, and to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years:-He made the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; He made the stars also. 2. These Celestial Lights are rendered subservient to the purposes for which they were created, by certain established laws of Motion, according to which they either really move, or seem to us to move. As the Divine Wisdom has not thought proper to reveal to us what these laws of Motion are, there have been certain conjectures made concerning them. These conjectures are called Systems, from a Greek word denoting the harmoniously arranging of certain bodies with respect to one another; they are also named Hypotheses (or suppositions), because it can not be asserted concerning even the most probable of them, that the heavenly bodies do so move. But it is reasonable to suppose that they do move according to one of these Systems rather than in any other way, because upon such a supposition their phænomena (i. e. their appearances) may be fairly solved and explained. It is the business of a particular Science to explain these systems and phænomena, and hence it is called Astronomy, from two Greek words denoting the knowledge of the laws of the stars. B |