New Zealand, whose length extends fully 12 degrees
of latitude, forms an intermediate link between Australia and South America,
likewise terminating in an island, New Leinster. It is also a remarkable
circumstance that the greatest extension toward the south falls in the Old
Continent, under the same meridian in which the extremest projection toward
the north pole is manifested. This will be perceived on comparing the Cape
of Good Hope and the Lagullas Bank with the North Cape of Europe, and the
peninsula of Malacca with Cape Taimura in Siberia.*
[footnote] *Humboldt, 'Asie Centrale', t. i., p. 198-200. The southern
point of America, and the Archipelago which we call Terra del Fuego, lie in
the meridian of the northwestern part of Baffin's Bay, and of the great
polar land, whose limits have not as yet been ascertained, and which,
perhaps, belongs to West Greenland.
We know not whether the poles of the earth are surrounded by land or by a
sea of ice. Toward the north pole the parallel of 82 degrees 55' has been
reached, but toward the south pole only that of 78 degrees 10'.
The pyramidal terminations of the great continents are variously repeated on
a smaller scale, not only in the Indian Ocean and in the peninsulas of
Arabia, Hindostan, and Malacca, but also, as was remarked by Eratosthenes
and Polybius, in the Mediterranean, where these writers had ingeniously
compared together the forms of the Iberian, Italian, and Hellenic
peninsulas.
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