TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 667 



days. There is doubtless much which is of the greatest commercial and poli- 

 tical interest still to imravel in connection with the geography of the great river 

 hasins of the continent. But in South America we are threatened with perhaps the 

 greatest development of what I may call artificial geography that the world has ever 

 seen. Not only will the consummation of the Panama Canal project change the 

 whole system of our western sea communications, and probably exercise a more 

 enduring effect on the world's commerce than even the Suez connection between 

 East and West, but the possibilities of linking up by a central canal system the 

 three great river basins of the South— that of the Orinoco, the Amazon, and the 

 Plata — is under serious consideration, and the mere project will in itself lead to 

 an exhaustive examination of much untravelled country. Thus, even South 

 America no longer oilers a large field for the geographical pioneer of the future. 

 With its narrowing areas of terra incofjnita and its almost phenomenal advance 

 towards a leading position as the pastoral and meat-producing quarter of the 

 habitable globe ; with possibilities of development in this particular line probably 

 exceeding those of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa all put together, 

 it is surely high time that South America turned her attention towards a com- 

 bined and sustained international effort to place her scattered and most insufficient 

 geographical surveys on a sound geodetic basis extending through the whole 

 continent. 



North America. 



In the geographical fields presented by North America, as also by Australia, 

 magnificent as are the opportunities for acquiring that personal acquaintance with 

 the great depositions of nature which environ new conditions of life, and shape 

 the course of human existence to its appointed ends, or, in other words, to acquire 

 a geographical education from original sources of instruction, there is but little 

 opening for the enterprise of the pioneer who aspires to show the way into new 

 fields. There is no lack of native enterprise in colonies peopled by the stout- 

 hearted descendants of generations of explorers. Neither Canadians nor Aus- 

 tralians wait for England to show them how to develop the resources of their 

 own country, or pilot the road to new ventures. On the contrary, we have to 

 turn to Canada now for iustruction in the higher art of geographical map- 

 making, and to admit that England has beeu left far behind in the development 

 of the special branch of science which deals with the illustration of the main 

 features of geographical configuration in relation to their geological construction. 



Africa. 



In Africa the advance of our knowledge of the main outline of the geogra- 

 phical features of the continent has been so rapid since the days when the Nile 

 was first traced to its source by Speke that a perfect network of explorers' lines 

 of travel now embraces the continent in its meshes, and it is only in the inter- 

 mediate spaces that room for enterprise on the part of the pioneer is left, even if it 

 may not be said altogether to have vanished. A reference to the little map pub- 

 lished by Mr. liavenstein in the ' Geographical Journal ' for last December will show 

 you at once that the hydrography of Africa has beeu fairly well traced out in all 

 its main arteries, leaving but few unexplored spaces of any great extent ; and 

 that such spaces, where they occur within the area which is especially open to 

 Englishmen, demand an organised system of exploration more complete in its 

 results, more carefully balanced in its relation to the geographical illustration of 

 those lands which are beginning to form centres of civilisation than can be secured 

 by the process of pioneer route making. In short, we want a system of geo- 

 graphical surveying allied to those systems which have been perfected after 

 years of careful experiment by Canada, or Russia, or France, or by England in 

 India. This, however, brings us into a field of technical inquiry of great impoit- 

 ance, into which, so far as it deals with geography, i.e., with the measurement of 

 the earth's surface and the illustration of its configuration by means of maps, 

 I propose to enter briefly in this Address. 



