Of
mankind at that period, and as bearing on and conducing to their future
progress; whereas when geography and commerce have been carried so far as
to proceed in their course as it were by their own internal impulse,
derived from the motion they have been acquiring for ages, their interest
and importance is much diminished from this cause, as well as from the
minuteness of the objects to which, - all the great ones having been
previously occupied by them, - they must necessarily be confined.
Several circumstances co-operated to direct geographical discovery, during
the eighteenth century, principally towards the north and north-east of
Asia, and the north-west of America. The tendency and interest of the
Russian empire to stretch itself to the east, and the hope still cherished
by the more commercial and maritime nations of Europe, that a passage to
the East Indies might be discovered, either by the north-east round Asia,
or by the north-west, in the direction of Hudson's Bay, were among the most
powerful of the causes which directed discovery towards those parts of the
globe to which we have just alluded.
The extent of the Russian discoveries and conquests in the north and
north-east of Asia, added much to geographical knowledge, though from the
nature of the countries discovered and conquered, the importance of this
knowledge is comparatively trifling.
