GEOGRAPHIC PROGBESS — KELTIE. 605 



may yet be utilized with good results. We have found that the con- 

 tinent is not nearly so hopeless as was believed from the standpoint 

 of European settlement and enterprise. The white man has learned 

 better how to adapt himself to tropical conditions, while there are 

 many regions with altitudes that afford a climate in which the Euro- 

 pean can live in comfort and wholesomeness. Still, so far as we 

 can see at present, the resources of the continent must be developed 

 mainly by native races under the guidance of their white brothers. 



As to these white brothers, we must next consider the areas that 

 have fallen to the share of the various European powers. The scram- 

 ble, which may be said to have begun wdien Stanley went out for the 

 King of the Belgians to annex the Congo in 1879 and was virtually 

 completed in 1886, has culminated in the absorption of the whole of 

 the continent, except Abyssinia in the east and Liberia in the west. 

 Britain has no need to be dissatisfied with her share, which now in- 

 cludes the whole of Egypt and the Egyptian Sudan. * * * 

 Britain's share amounts to 3,500,000 square miles, with a popula- 

 tion of 53,000,000 ; France to 4,500,000 square miles, with a population 

 of only 42,000,000; and Germany 1,000,000, with a population of 

 12,000,000. The rest belongs to Portugal, Spain, Liberia, and 

 Abyssinia. Of the total trade in 1914 Britain claimed £155,000,000 

 (of which 90,000,000 were exports), or two-thirds, leaving only one- 

 third to the other powers. 



Much still remains to be done before our knowledge of the geog- 

 raphy and economic potentialities of Africa can be regarded as ade- 

 quate. A great network of routes and more or less provisional sur- 

 veys have been laid down all over the continent, but the broad meshes 

 between these lines have yet to be filled in. To accomplish this sat- 

 isfactorily we require the services of specialists trained to scientific 

 investigation in the various departments of science on which geog- 

 raphy, in its broadest and highest aspects, is based, for it is only as 

 all the raw material from all over the surface of our globe is brought 

 together and systematically arranged that the geographical student 

 will be in a position to work out the many problems, physical and 

 human, with which his science has to deal. 



I fear I must treat America with brevity. In the most popular 

 American textbook of geography a few years before our half century 

 it was gravely stated that the Alleghenies of North America were 

 the continuation of the Andes in South America. Half a century 

 ago much of the region west of Lake Ontario in the north and of 

 the Mississippi in the south was the home of the Indian, the trapper, 

 and the buffalo. Canada consisted still of Upper and Lower Canada ; 

 Victoria on Vancouver Island was only a Hudson's Ba^ Co.'s post ; 

 and so was Fort Garry, now the great city of Winnipeg. Vancouver 

 City did not exist. How Canada has since pushed westward you all 



