'VRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 839 
It is impossible in such a brief sketch to enumerate even the leading events of 
the geographical year ; but what I have said is enough to remind us of the great 
amount of valuable and useful work which is being done in many quarters of the 
world. It is true that if we compare this record with the record of years gone by 
we find a marked difference. Then, there was always some great geographical 
problem to be attacked: the sources of the Nile had to be discovered ; the course 
of the Niger had to be traced ; and the great white patches on our maps stimulated 
the imagination of explorers with the thought of all sorts of possibilities. Now, 
though there is much to be learned, vet, with the exception of the Poles, the work 
will consist in filling in the details of the picture, the general outlines being all 
drawn for us already. Personally I cannot help feeling a completely unreasoning 
regret that we have almost passed out of the heroic period of geography. What- 
ever the future may have in store for us, it can never give us another Columbus, 
another Magellan, or another Livingstone. The geographical discoverers of the 
future will win their fame in a more prosaic fashion, though their work may in 
reality be of even greater service to mankind. There are now few places in the 
world where the outline of the main topographical features is unknown; but, on the 
other hand, there are vast districts not yet thoroughly examined. And, in examin- 
. ing these more or less known localities, geographers must take a far wider view 
than heretofore of their methods of study in order to accommodate themselves to 
modern conditions. 
But even if we confine our attention to the older and more narrow field of 
geography, it will be seen that there is still an immense amount of work to be 
done. We have been filling in the map of Africa during recent years with 
extraordinary rapidity, but yet that map is likely to remain in a very unsatisfactory 
condition for a long time to come. Englishmen and other Europeans have always 
shown themselves to be ready to risk their lives in exploring unknown regions, but 
we have yet to see how readily they will undertake the plodding work of recording 
topographical details when little renown is to be won by their efforts. It should 
be one of the objects of geographical societies to educate the public to recognise 
the importance of this work, and General Chapman deserves great credit for bring- 
ing the matter before the International Congress last year in such a prominent 
manner. He confined himself to four main recommendations: (1) The extension 
of accurate topographical surveys in regions likely to be settled by Europeans. 
(2) The encouragement of travellers to sketch areas rather than routes. (3) The 
study of astronomical observations already taken in the unsurveyed parts of Africa 
in a systematic manner, and the publication of the results. (4) The accurate 
determination of the latitude and longitude of many important places in unsurveyed 
Africa. I am certain that all geographers are in hearty accord with General 
Chapman in his views, and it is, perhaps, by continually bringing this matter before 
the public that we shall best help this movement forward. 
Not only do we want a more accurate filling in of the picture, but we have yet 
to learn to read its lessons aright. The past cannot be understood, and still less 
can the future be predicted, without a wider conception of geographical facts. 
Look, for example, at the European colonies on the West Coast of Africa. Here 
we find that there have been Portuguese settlements on the Gold Coast since the 
year 1471, the French possibly having been established there at an even earlier 
date ; whilst we English, who pride ourselves on our go-ahead character, have had 
trading factories on the Coast since 1667, I have here a map showing the state of 
our geographical knowledge in 1815. Why was it that Europeans have never, 
broadly speaking, pushed into the interior from their base on the coast, which they 
had occupied for so many centuries? That they had not done go, at least to any 
purpose, is proved by this map. Why had four centuries of contact with Europeans 
done so little even for geographical knowledge at that time? The answer to this 
question may be said to be mainly historical; but the history of our African 
colonies can never be understood without a study of the distribution of the dense 
belt of unhealthy forest along the shore; of the distribution of the different types 
of native inhabitants; and of the courses of the navigable rivers, all strictly geo- 
a . . . 
_ graphical considerations. 
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