GEOGRAPHICAL EVOLUTION 841 



earth? From the geographical point of view and it is to 

 this point alone that these remarks apply we must rank 

 an explorer according to his success in widening our knowl- 

 edge and enlarging our views regarding the aspects of 

 nature. 



The demands of modern geography are thus becoming 

 every year more exacting. It requires more training in its 

 explorers abroad, more knowledge on the part of its readers 

 at home. The days are drawing to a close when one can 

 gain undying geographical renown by struggling against man 

 and beast, fever and hunger and drought, across some 

 savage and previously unknown region, even though little can 

 be shown as the outcome of the journey. All honour to 

 the pioneers by whom this first exploratory work has been 

 so nobly done ! They will be succeeded by a race that will 

 find its laurels more difficult to win a race from which 

 more will be expected, and which will need to make 

 up in the variety, amount, and value of its detail, what it 

 lacks in the freshness of first glimpses into new lands. 



With no other science has geography become more in- 

 timately connected than with geology, and the connec- 

 tion is assuredly destined to become yet deeper and closer. 

 These two branches of human knowledge are, to use Hak- 

 luyt's phrase, " the sunne and moone, the right eye and 

 the left," of all fruitful inquiry into the character and his- 

 tory of the earth's surface. As it is impossible to under- 

 stand the genius and temperament of a people, its laws 

 and institutions, its manners and customs, its buildings and 

 its industries, unless we trace back the history of that people, 

 and mark the rise and effect of each varied influence by 

 which its progress has been moulded in past generations; 

 so it is clear that our knowledge of the aspect of a con- 

 tinent, its mountains and valleys, rivers and plains, and all 

 its surface-features, cannot be other than singularly feeble 

 and imperfect, unless we realise what has been the origin 

 of these features. The land has had a history, not less than 

 the human races that inhabit it. 



One can hardly consider attentively the future progress 

 of geography without being convinced that in the wide 

 development yet in store for this branch of human inquiry, 



