anciently inhabited, there are but few woods, little water, no morasses, much land, and a number of mountains, whose summits are dry and barren; for men destroy the woods, drain the waters, confine rivers, dry up morasses, and in time give a different appearance to the face of the earth, from that, of uninhabited or newly-peopled countries. The ancients were acquainted with but a small part of the globe. All America, the Magellanic, and a great part of the interior of Africa, was entirely unknown to them. They knew not that the torrid zone was inhabited, although they had navigated around Africa, for it is 2200 years since Neco, king of Egypt, gave vessels to the Phenicians, who sailed along the Red Sea, coasted round Africa, doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and having employed two years in this voyage, the third year they entered the straits of Gibraltar.[163:A] The ancients were unacquainted with the property of the loadstone, if turned towards the poles, although they knew that it attracted iron. They were ignorant of the general cause of the flux and reflux of the sea, nor were they certain the ocean surrounded the globe; some indeed suspected it might be so, but with so little foundation, that no one dared to say, or even conjecture, it was possible to make a voyage round the world. Magellan was the first who attempted it in the year 1519, and accomplished the great voyage in 1124 days. Sir Francis Drake was the second in 1577, and he performed it in 1056 days; afterwards Thomas Cavendish made this great voyage in 777 days, in the year 1586. These celebrated navigators were the first who demonstrated physically the sphericity and the extent of the earth's circumference; for the ancients had no conception of the extent of this circumference, although they had travelled a great deal. The trade winds, so useful in long voyages, were also unknown to them; therefore we must not be surprised at the little progress they made in geography. Notwithstanding the knowledge we have acquired by the aid of mathematical sciences, and the discovery of navigators, many things remain still unsettled, and vast countries undiscovered. Almost all the land on the side of the Atlantic pole is unknown to us; we only know that there is some, and that it is separated from all the other continents by the ocean. Much land also remains to be discovered on the side of the Arctic pole, and it is to be regretted that for more than a century the ardour of discovering new countries is extremely abated. European governments seem to prefer, and possibly with reason, increasing the value of those countries we are acquainted with to the glory of conquering new ones.