Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect
that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remon-
strate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave for I was told that this was the case
in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush
the fingers of her female slaves. I have staid in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and
hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have
seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on
his naked head, for having handed me a mere glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble
at a mere glance from his master's eye.
Galápago
is the Spanish word for tortoise
.
The first of these excerpts explains how these famed islands
got their name. An island province of Ecuador, the Galápagos Islands (officially known as the Archipiélago
de Colón) are a combined 3,075-square-mile island group located in the Pacific about 600 miles (970 km)
west of mainland South America. The group includes six main islands, one smaller island with an airport,
and eleven uninhabited islands.
Most people's image of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) is that of a somber and stern bearded Victorian
man permanently linked with that of a monkey, an oversimplification of his ideas of evolution. But as these
excerpts show, Darwin had a human and humane side. His account of a five-year voyage on board the
surveying ship HMS
Beagle
was a great popular success in England and made Darwin a bit of a literary
celebrity before he became more notorious as the father of modern evolutionary theory. The unique animal
life of the Galápagos Islands, cut off from contact with other species, inspired much of Charles Darwin's
revolutionary thinking. Although he had begun to formulate his theories of natural selection during the
voyage, he was reluctant to publish them. Only when he received a manuscript written by a friend and
fellow scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace, outlining a set of ideas remarkably similar to his own, did Darwin
publish
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
(1859).
Simple enough for the lay reader, the topic was an instant success, with the first printing selling out
in a single day. It also marked the opening of an enormous controversy. Darwin's idea that species gradu-
ally evolve from earlier species didn't simply challenge existing scientific notions. Overnight, his theories
called into question the whole of Christian orthodoxy and the very truth of the Bible in a time when such
ideas were heresy, and cause for ridicule and social disgrace. Darwin provoked even greater public outrage
in 1871 with
The Descent of Man
, which put forward the idea that man and the anthropoid apes were des-
cended from a common ancestor, now a basic article of scientific understanding.
What Is the Difference Between an Ocean and a Sea? And Are There Only “Seven”
Seas?
This is another trick question. If you agree that there is only one ocean, then the seas are part of it. But
for the sake of finding your way around the world, the One Great Ocean has been split up. Four oceans;
many more seas. Basically, a sea refers either to a smaller division of the oceans or to a large saltwater
body partially enclosed by land.
Just in case oceans and seas didn't sufficiently confuse you, there are also
bays
and
gulfs
to further
complicate matters. A bay is simply a large indentation into the land formed by the sea. Much larger than
bays are gulfs; large, deep inlets of the ocean or sea surrounded by land or an extensive inlet penetrating
far into the land. There are some bays and gulfs that are larger than seas.
