AT ORE, 
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1902. 
MODERN SCIENTIFIC GEOGRAPHY. 
The Nearer East. By D. G. Hogarth, M.A. (The 
Regions of the World. Edited by H. J. Mackinder, 
M.A.) Pp. xvit+296. (London: Heinemann, 1902.) 
T has long been a reproach to the British nation that 
it, the greatest, if not the only real, colonising nation 
of the West, undoubtedly also the most travelled nation 
of the world, devotes less time and trouble to the study 
of geography than any other people. The manner in 
which geography is taught, or rather is not taught, in 
our great public schools is indeed more than a reproach 
to England, it is a disgrace. Great geographers we 
have had and have; our disgrace lies in the fact that 
geographical instruction is well-nigh omitted from the 
curriculum of the schools which our upper classes are 
accustomed to patronise, our reproach in the fact that the 
average English “ classical ” schoolmaster would probably 
prove ill-fitted to impart such instruction were he given 
the opportunity and the means of doing so. What average 
“educated” Briton could answer a series of simple 
questions on the geography, commerce and politics of 
the Persian Gulf? Yet a German observer would 
probably consider it remarkable that the citizen who may 
have ere long to cast his vote this way or that as to 
whether Russia is to be peacefully allowed to extend her 
sway by Teheran to Bushire and Bandar Abbas, or is to 
be forcibly prevented from doing so by war, should know 
practically nothing of a matter which may have an out- 
come most vitally affecting his empire and himself! 
Of late, however, we seem to be trying to improve 
ourselves a little in this matter of general geographical 
knowledge. The University of Oxford has created a 
Readership in Geography, and it could have found no 
better man to fill the post of Reader than Mr. Mackinder, 
whose energetic geographical propaganda is deserving 
of the highest praise. The series of handy and useful 
books entitled “The Regions of the World,” of which 
he is editor, does indeed “supply a long-felt want,” for 
it is calculated to supply, not only valuable books of 
reference to the merchant and the politician, and inter- 
esting manuals for Se/bstunterricht to the don and the 
schoolmaster, but also readable and informing volumes 
which will reach the average patron of Mudie’s Select 
Library, which is exactly what one wants. 
The preparation of the volume which deals with the 
“Nearer East” has been confided by Mr. Mackinder 
to hands in all respects fitted to deal with it. 
Few know the lands of the Levant better than Mr. 
Hogarth, and though he may not have seen the Arabian 
waste or the wall of Elburz with his own eyes, yet no 
reader of his book can doubt his capacity to use the eyes 
of others to the best advantage, and it can certainly be 
said that the portions of his work which deal with 
Arabia and with Persia suffer in no way from the fact 
that he himself has not yet visited those countries. 
They emphatically give the lie to the pretension that no 
man may write a book about a country unless he has 
been there himself. 
As to the limits of the “Nearer East” opinions may 
NO. 1722, VOL. 66] 
649 
differ. Mr. Hogarth rules out the whole north coast 
of Africa west of Egypt ; yet Cyrenaica and Tripoli are 
of the Nearer East, and, though we may consent to omit 
Algeria because Algiers is a French city, surely Morocco. 
is of the East Eastern. But Mr. Hogarth sets his frontier 
in the Libyan Desert, and, all things considered, we have 
no fault to find with him for having done so. : 
The boundary-line of his territory runs eastward from’ 
the northernmost limits of Albania across the “ Balkan 
Peninsula” to the Black Sea coast of Eastern Rumelia ; 
thence to the Caucasus and the Caspian, and then south- 
eastward across the desert which divides Khorasan from 
Kerman and Irak to the limit of Baluchistan on the 
Indian Ocean ; thence round Arabia and up the Red Sea 
to a point on a line with Aswan ; then along the historical 
southern boundary of Egypt proper to the Western 
Desert, and so northwards west of the Oases up to and 
across the Mediterranean and up the Adriatic to his 
starting point. E 
The author deals with the various lands comprised within 
this boundary in this order: first, ‘“‘ The Balkan Belts,” 
then “ The Asian Ascent,” then “The Central Upland,” 
then ‘“‘ The South-western Plains,” lastly ‘‘ Egypt.” In the 
“First Part” of the volume these lands are thus generally 
described ; then foilow three chapters on their geological 
structure, their climates and their “ Physical Circum- 
stance.” Inthe “Second Part” the human inhabitants 
of the Nearer East first appear upon the scene, in 
chapters dealing with their distribution and grouping, 
the products of their lands, their communications, and 
their life under the varying conditions which obtain in 
the various regions’ described. A chapter on ‘“ World 
Relation” finishes the book. Maps are frequent and, 
on the whole, good. 
This is a modern scientific geography book, systematic 
in plan, clear and picturesque in description, and, above 
all, “giving to think.” 
Upon the excellence of the general plan of the work 
we need enlarge no further. So far as description is 
concerned, what could be better than the following im- 
pression of the great island which fences in the Hellenic 
world to the south with its mighty mountain barrier :— 
“A serrated and shaggy wall, rising from a wind- 
tormented, inhospitable sea, and interrupted by three 
main depressions, of which two are low; little locked 
pans and long verdant valleys, hidden inland behind 
spurs ; spontaneous vegetation wherever the north wind 
is shut away—such is the impression left by Crete” (p. 123) ? 
Or take this, of the Egyptian desert (p. 142) :— 
“The Egyptian wastes are of limestone formation from 
the sea to Silsileh. .. . Accordingly, except between 
Silsileh and Aswan, the traveller will expect to find in 
the desert all varieties of contour, hill and cliff, valley 
and gorge, beds of streams and of tributary rivulets ; 
yet neither verdure nor water, but a skeleton of earth, 
such a landscape as may be imagined in the moon. .. . 
And here and there in the hollows and wadis will be even 
such tussocky vegetation as camels love, drawing its life 
from a hidden humidity . . .” 
Space forbids our giving the whole of the description 
which follows of the prospect which greets the desert 
traveller on his arrival on the brink of the Nile valley ; 
we must therefore content ourselves with the following :— 
EE 
