368 THE PROGRESS OF GEOaRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE. 



grasped the full meaning of the term as applied to ,surve3',s on geo- 

 graphical scales (i. e., 1:250000, or about -i inches per mile, or less) 

 under normal conditions. Such surv^eys can be completed (piite as 

 fast as an arm}- can advance in the tield, even granting that the 

 advance is continuous. They can even to a certain extent precede 

 that advance in face of an enemy. A single triangulator with a staff 

 of two or three topographers in a fairly favorable country will l^e 

 responsible for an out turn which may l)e counted ])y hundreds of 

 square miles per day. The records of both American and Canadian 

 surve3^s will prove that the marvelous progress made in the frontiin- 

 reconnoissance surveys of India is nothing al)normal or unexpected. 



NECESSITY FOR TRAINING SCHOOLS. 



So far I have spoken a})out the system only, a S3^stem which has 

 been nearly perfected by experiments in Canada, Russia, India, and 

 elsewhere. Now we have to turn from the work to the workmen. It 

 is only lately, quite lately, that England has discovered that such work- 

 men are wanted at all. FIac or six years ago there was not a topog- 

 rapher nor a topographical school in England. But the demand 

 during late years has been insistent and constant, with the result, I 

 am glad to say, that efforts have ))een mad(; in various directions to 

 start topographical schools, and a distinct change is apparent in our 

 methods of instruction at military headcpiarters. No purely technical 

 central civil schools, such as exist on the Continent, are to be found 

 in England, and the natural result is that at present England possesses 

 no finished topographers and not many men who know what is meant 

 by a geographical surve3\ In the wilds of Patagonia (which is. I nuist 

 premise, a country beset with special climatic difficulties but not 

 otherwise one unsuitable to the t()i)()grai)her's art) I met many men of 

 great intelligence and exceptional skill who had been gathered from 

 various quarters for the purpose of topography. There were Italians, 

 Argentines, Germans, French, and Swiss, but not an Englishman 

 among them. Russians of the type of my old and unforgotten friend 

 Benderski have long been famous for their skill; but, although 

 English administrators and soldiers are alike crying out for more and 

 better assistance in the active tield of topography, the}' can not get it 

 from England. 'I'he establishment of a school of practical geography, 

 such as must eventuall}' guarantee the existcMice of a military topo- 

 graphical corps, woidd be a mattei- of congratulation deserving to be 

 noted as an important step in the advance of tHe geographical educa- 

 tion of the country, no less than the school at Oxford which deals more 

 directly with civil interests and is rightly most concerned with the 

 academic aspects of geographical instruction. Even this, however, is 

 hardly sufficient. I am convijiced that the i-econunendation which arose 

 from certain resolutions found in the geographical section of the 



