4*4 



NATURE 



{Sept. 13, 1888 



1873 from if to 21 million hundredweights. It is almost im- 

 possible to estimate the ultimate dimensions of the wheat trade, 

 and it is only the forerunner of other trades in which India 

 is destined to compete keenly with the English and European 

 producers. 



The position in which England has been placed by the opening 

 of the Canal is in some respects similar to that of Venice afcer 

 the discovery of the Cape route ; but there is a wide difference 

 in the spirit with which the change in the commercial routes was 

 accepted. Venice made no attempt to use the Cape route, and 

 did all she could to prevent others from taking advantage of it : 

 England, though by a natural instinct she opposed the construc- 

 tion of the Canal, was one of the first to take advantage of it 

 when opened, and so far as the carrying trade is concerned she 

 has hitherto successfully competed with other countries. 



It is only natural to ask what the result of the opening of the 

 Panama Canal will be. To this it may be replied that the Canal, 

 when completed as a maritime canal, without locks, will promote 

 commercial intercourse between the eastern and western coasts 

 of America ; will benefit merchants by diminishing distances, 

 and reducing insurance charges ; and possibly divert the course 

 of some of the trade between the East and West ; but it will 

 produce no such changes as those which have followed the 

 construction of the Suez Canal. 



The increasing practice of the present day is for each maritime 

 country to import and carry the Indian and other commodities 

 it requires, and we must be prepared for a time when England 

 will no longer be the emporium of Eastern commerce for Europe, 

 or possess so large a proportion as she now does of the carrying 

 trade. So great, however, is the genius of the English people 

 for commercial enterprise, and so imbued are they with the 

 spirit of adventure, that we may reasonably hope loss of trade 

 in one direction will be compensated by the discovery of new 

 fields of commercial activity. The problem of sea-carriage has 

 virtually been solved by the construction of the large ocean 

 steamers which run direct from port to port without regard to 

 winds or currents ; and the only likely improvement in this 

 direction is an increase of speed which may possibly rise to as 

 much as thirty knots an hour. The tendency at present is to 

 shorten sea-routes by maritime canals ; to construct canals for 

 bringing ocean-going ships to inland centres of industry ; and to 

 utilize water carriage, wherever it may be practicable, in pre- 

 ference to carriage by land. For a correct determination of the 

 lines which these shortened trade routes and great maritime 

 canals should follow, a sound knowledge of geography and of 

 the physical condition of the earth is necessary ; and instruction 

 in this direction should form an important feature in any educa- 

 tional course of commercial geography. The great problem of 

 the future is the inland carrying trade, and one of the immediate 

 commercial questions of the day is, Who is to supply the 

 interiors of the great continents of Asia and Africa, and other 

 large areas not open to direct sea traffic ? Whether future 

 generations will see 



" The heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails. 

 Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales," 



or some form of electric carriage on land, may be matter for 

 speculation ; but it is not altogether impossible to foresee the 

 lines which inland trade must follow, and the places which must 

 become centres of the distributing trade, or to map out the 

 districts which must, under ordinary conditions, be dependent 

 upon such centres for their supply of imported commodities. 

 The question of supplying European goods to one portion of 

 Central Asia has been partially solved by the remarkable voyage 

 of Mr. Wiggins last year, and by the formation of the company 

 of the "Phoenix Merchant Adventurers." Mr. Wiggins started 

 from Newcastle-on-Tyne for Yeniseisk, the first large town on 

 the Yenisei, some 2000 miles from the mouth of that river, and 

 within a few hundred versts of the Chinese frontier. On the 9th 

 of October, 1887, he cast anchor and landed his cargo in the heart 

 of Siberia. The exploit is one of which any man might well be 

 proud, but in Mr. Wiggins's case there is the additional merit 

 that success was the result of conviction arrived at by a strict 

 , method of induction, that the Gulf Stream passed through the 

 Straits into the Kara Sea, and that its action, combined with 

 that of the immense volume of water brought down by the Obi 

 and Yenisei, would free the sea from ice and render it navigable 

 for a portion of each year. The attempts of England to open 

 up commercial relations with the interior of Africa have too 

 often been marked by want, if not open contempt, of geo- 



graphical knowledge, and by a great deficiency of foresight ; 

 but the competition with Germany is forcing this country to pay 

 increased attention to African commerce, and the formation of 

 such companies as the British East African Company, the 

 African Lakes Company, and the Royal Niger Company is a 

 happy omen for the future. 



Another branch of the subject to which attention may be 

 brief y directed is the fact that it is becoming increasingly evident 

 that manufactures cannot profitably be carried on at a distance 

 from the source of the raw material and the destination of the 

 products. In India, for instance, where the first mill for the 

 manufacture of cotton yarn and cloth was set up in 1854, there 

 are now over 100 cotton and jute mills with 22,000 looms 

 and 2,000,000 spindles ; and similar changes are taking place 

 elsewhere. 



I am afraid that I have frequently travelled beyond the sphere 

 of geography. My object has been to draw attention to the 

 supreme importance to this country of the science of commercial 

 geography. That science is not confined to a knowledge of the 

 localities in which those products of the earth which have a 

 commercial value are to be found, and of the markets in which 

 they can be sold with the greatest profit. Its higher aims are 

 to divine, by a combination of historical retrospect and scientific 

 foresight, the channels through which commerce will flow in the 

 future, and the points at which new centres of trade must arise 

 in obedience to known laws. A precise knowledge of the form, 

 size, and geological structure of the globe ; of its physical 

 features ; of the topographical distribution of its mineral and 

 vegetable products, and of the varied forms of animal life, 

 including man, that it sustains ; of the influence of geographical 

 environment on man and the lower animals ; and of the climatic 

 conditions of the various regions of the earth, is absolutely 

 essential to a successful solution of the many problems before 

 us. If England is to maintain her commanding position in the 

 world of commerce, she must approach these problems in the 

 spirit of Prince Henry the Navigator, and by high scientific 

 training fit her sons to play their part like men in the coming 

 struggle for commercial supremacy. The struggle will be keen, 

 and victory will rest with those who have most fully realized the 

 truth of the maxim that "Knowledge is power." 



I may add that if there is one point clearer than another in the 

 history of commerce it is this : that when a State cannot 

 effectually protect its carrying trade in time of war, that trade 

 passes from it and does not return. If England is ever found 

 wanting in the power to defend her carrying trade, her fate will 

 only too surely, and I might almost say justly, be that of Venice, 

 Spain, Portugal, and Holland. 



I will now ask you to turn your attention for a few moments to 

 another subject — Africa. In 1864, Sir Roderick Murchison alluded 

 to the great continent in the following terms : " Looking at the 

 most recent maps of Africa, see what enormous lacuna have to 

 be filled in, and what va^t portions of it the foot of the white 

 mau has never trodden." It was then impossible to give a 

 general sketch even of the geography of Equatorial Africa. 

 Tanganyika and Nyassa had been discovered, and Speke and 

 Grant had touched at a few points on the southern, western, and 

 northern shores of the Victoria Nyanza ; but we were still in 

 ignorance of the drainage and form of the immense tract of 

 country between the Tanganyika Lake and the Zambesi ; and 

 the heart of Africa, through which the mighty Congo rolls, was 

 as much unknown to us as the centre of America was to our 

 ancestors in the middle of the sixteenth century. There are now 

 few school-boys who could not give a fairly accurate sketch of 

 the geography of Central Africa ; and a comparison of the maps 

 published respectively in 1864 and 1888 will show how rapidly 

 the lacuna of which Sir Roderick complained are being filled in. 

 There is still much to be done, and it is precisely in one of the 

 few blank spots left on our maps that the man who may well be 

 called the Columbus of Africa has so mysteriously disappeared. 

 The discovery of the course of the Congo by Stanley has been 

 followed by results not unlike those which attended the discovery 

 of America by Columbus. In the latter part of the nineteenth 

 century Africa has become to Europe what America was in the 

 sixteenth century. Events march more rapidly now than they 

 did then, and the efforts of the maritime nations of Europe to 

 secure themselves some portion of African territory and some 

 channel through which they can pour their products into Cen- 

 tral Africa are rapidly changing the condition of the Dark 

 Continent. 



The roads over which the land trade of Equatorial Africa now 



