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206 A. W. Greely—Annual Address. 
Ten years ago our Commissioner of Education was asked by 
the Royal Geographical Society to give information setting forth 
the condition of geographic science and its appliances in the 
higher institutions of learning in the United States. The infor- 
mation sought was promised, but not furnished. The answer 
as regards nearly every college or university might well have 
been paraphrased from a stock army story of the officer who 
was directed to report on the morals and manners of an Indian 
tribe he had visited. He tersely said: “ Morals they have none 
and their manners are disgusting.” So scientific geographic in- 
struction until lately has been practically nil and its appliances 
obsolete and deficient, as far as the United States is concerned. 
It should not be understood that geographic research, or even 
genius, has been wanting in the United States. The clear-cut 
ideas, keen researches, vivid portrayals and lucid reasonings of 
Guyot have done much to raise the level of physical geography. 
The most striking contribution by the United States to the geo- 
graphic benefit of the world was that where, as Humboldt said, 
a new science was created through the genius of Maury, whose 
discriminating mind gave the original impulse to that special 
branch of geographic science now known as oceanography. His 
invaluable system of charts first delineated together as a unity 
great ocean currents, constant and variable winds, regions of 
storm and calm and the known whaling grounds. Few appre- 
ciate the enormous practical outcome of Maury’s labors, which 
have saved to mankind tens of millions of dollars through the 
shortened voyages of its commercial transports, which in tens of 
thousands, weave and reweave across the seas the web of com- 
mercial intercourse essential to human progress and prosperity. 
More frequently the reverse side, that of geographic ignorance, 
has presented itself to the attention of man, with its inevitable 
train of futile enterprises, wasted efforts and ruined fortunes. 
Now it is an expensive governmental experiment, foredoomed to 
non-success with its enforced and hasty generalizations, based 
on insufficient or incorrect data; again it is a commercial enter- 
prise, a great canal, an industrial scheme, a commercial venture, 
initiated under geographic conditions that forecast inevitable 
failure. If it is not an official, squandering tens of thousands of 
dollars in accumulating for building purposes steam saw-mills 
and bodies of skilled wood-workers in a treeless region abound- 
ing in building stone, it is a host of moneyed individuals buy- 
