THE GEOGRAPHIC CONQUESTS OF THE NINETEENTH 



CENTURY. 



By Gilbert H. Grosvenor. 



In ISOO, the year that Jefferson was first elected President of the 

 United States and Napoleon won the history-making- battle of Marengo, 

 about one-fifth of the earth's land surface was known. The ph^'sical 

 features of the remaining four-fifths were partly supplied by imagina- 

 tive map makers or left a blank on the charts given to the public. In 

 1900 approximated ten-elevenths of the earth's land surface may be 

 described as known and only one-eleventh as unexplored. In fact 

 much less than one-eleventh remains unknown, for the unknown area 

 is so distril)uted in both hemispheres that nowhere except at the North 

 and South poles are there remaining large unexplored tracts. This 

 will be readily seen by a glance at the maps that accompany this paper. 



The eighteenth century' had been noted for the explorers of the seas, 

 the nineteenth was preeminent in men who split open great continents 

 and laid bare to the eyes of mankind their mountains, rivers, and 

 lakes. 



AFRICA. 



One hundred 3^ears ago Africa was a gigantic black plate with a 

 white rim Avhich had been tolerabl}" well traced by Vasco de Gama, and 

 other l)old Portuguese adventurers of the sea. Though nearer to 

 Europe than any of the continents, stretching as it does parallel to the 

 south coast of Europe for 1,000 miles, the deadliness of its climate 

 had averted the greedy eyes and hands of Spain, France, England, and 

 Portugal, who were battling for dominions in the Americas and India 

 thousands of miles farther away. They came to Africa for slaves to 

 develop the new world and that was all they sought in the Dark 

 Continent. 



To-day hundreds of sharply defined lines of light, the routes of the 

 patient Livingstone, of grim Stanley, of Baker, Speke, and Mungo 

 Park, like the piercing beams of a searchlight have penetrated the 

 contin(Mitfrom north and south, from east and west, until there remain 

 black patches only here and there, and these are partly lighted by the 

 rays radiating from the main lines of exploration. Every square mile 

 of this great continent, excepting Morocco and Abyssinia, has, more- 

 over, been peacefully parceled out within the nineteenth century to the 



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