Discoverers and Explorers

Discoverers and Explorers, by
Edward R. Shaw

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Title: Discoverers and Explorers
Author: Edward R. Shaw
Release Date: July 22, 2007 [EBook #22116]
Language: English
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DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS ***

Produced by Ron Swanson

DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS
BY
EDWARD R. SHAW Dean of the School of Pedagogy New York

University

NEW YORK :: CINCINNATI :: CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK
COMPANY

Copyright 1900 By EDWARD R. SHAW.

PREFACE.
The practice of beginning the study of geography with the locality in
which the pupil lives, in order that his first ideas of geographical
conceptions may be gained from observation directed upon the real
conditions existing about him, has been steadily gaining adherence
during the past few years as a rational method of entering upon the
study of geography.
After the pupil has finished an elementary study of the locality, he is
ready to pass to an elementary consideration of the world as a whole, to
get his first conception of the planet on which he lives. His knowledge
of the forms of land and water, his knowledge of rain and wind, of heat
and cold, as agents, and of the easily traced effects resulting from the
interaction of these agents, have been acquired by observation and
inference upon conditions actually at hand; in other words, his
knowledge has been gained in a presentative manner.
His study of the world, however, must differ largely from this, and
must be effected principally by representation. The globe in relief,
therefore, presents to him his basic idea, and all his future study of the
world will but expand and modify this idea, until at length, if the study
is properly continued, the idea becomes exceedingly complex.
In passing from the geography of the locality to that of the world as a
whole, the pupil is to deal broadly with the land masses and their
general characteristics. The continents and oceans, their relative

situations, form, and size, are then to be treated, but the treatment is
always to be kept easily within the pupil's capabilities--the end being
merely an elementary world-view.
During the time the pupil is acquiring this elementary knowledge of the
world as a whole, certain facts of history may be interrelated with the
geographical study.
According to the plan already suggested, it will be seen that the pupil is
carried out from a study of the limited area of land and water about him
to an idea of the world as a sphere, with its great distribution of land
and water. In this transference he soon comes to perceive how small a
part his hitherto known world forms of the great earth-sphere itself.
Something analogous to this transition on the part of the pupil to a
larger view seems to be found in the history of the western nations of
Europe. It is the gradual change in the conception of the world held
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to the enlarged conception
of the world as a sphere which the remarkable discoveries and
explorations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries brought about.
The analogy serves pedagogically to point out an interesting and
valuable interrelation of certain facts of history with certain phases of
geographical study.
This book has been prepared for the purpose of affording material for
such an interrelation. The plan of interrelation is simple. As the study
of the world as a whole, in the manner already sketched, progresses, the
appropriate chapters are read, discussed, and reproduced, and the routes
of the various discoverers and explorers traced. No further word seems
to the writer necessary in regard to the interrelation.
DRESDEN, July 15, 1899.

CONTENTS.
PAGE BELIEFS AS TO THE WORLD FOUR HUNDRED YEARS

AGO . . 9 MARCO POLO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
COLUMBUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 VASCO DA
GAMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT'S
VOYAGES . . . . . . . . 44 AMERIGO VESPUCCI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
48 PONCE DE LEON . . . . . . . . . .