3 88 



The National Geographic Magazine 



In Asia a great new line of communi- 

 cation has been completed — the Trans- 

 Siberian Railway. 



Along the wide floor of the Pacific a 

 world nerve vibrates today which did 

 not exist when you last met — the new 

 Pacific cable. 



Wireless telegraphy is an accom- 

 plished fact today, not an experiment, 

 and the atmosphere of the globe in a 

 short time will throb incessantly with 

 countless messages. 



Finally, there is that vision of the 

 centuries, that envious dream of mon- 

 archs and ministerssinceGomara quested 

 for the ' ' Secret of the Strait ' ' four 

 hundred years ago — the Isthmian Canal, 

 the union of the Atlantic and the Pa- 

 cific — the grandest project, the greatest 

 engineering, financial, and diplomatic 

 problem of the age. 



A fearless master hand has at a stroke 

 cut the Gordian tangle that has hith- 

 erto defied the ablest statesmen and 

 financiers of the world, and the nations 

 today accept without question the Pan- 

 ama Canal as a fact. 



A few years hence and the commerce 

 of the world will pass freely from the 

 eastern sea to the western sea, travers- 

 ing almost air lines from port to port, 

 at an enormous saving of time and 

 distance and expense, and this great 

 orient-and-occident-facing Republic will 

 rest content with coasts united from 

 Eastport to the Straits of Fuca. 



Much has been done in the geograph- 

 ical world since the last Congress, both 

 in the field and in the study, and the 

 number of possible great discoveries is 

 rapidly narrowing every year. 



Only two great prizes now wait the 

 present-day explorer — the North Pole 

 and the South Pole. 



It is interesting to note how, from 

 Congress to Congress, the scene of geo- 

 graphical interest shifts from one region 

 to another. 



Africa, Arctica, Antarctica have fol- 

 lowed in succession. What will it be 



next, or will some of the old loves con- 

 tinue to claim our advances until full 

 surrender? 



The most prominent feature of geo- 

 graphical work since the last Congress 

 has been the activity in Antarctic ex- 

 ploration. The international program 

 formulated at the last two congresses 

 has been carried out, and a large and 

 valuable amount of work done and ma- 

 terial secured. 



England, Germany, Sweden, Scot- 

 land, Belgium, and France have all sent 

 ships to this region, and the result has 

 been to wonderfully increase our knowl- 

 edge of that most interesting portion of 

 the globe. 



I shall not attempt any details or dis- 

 cussion. These we shall have first hand 

 from those who have led the expedi- 

 tions and been intimately identified with 

 them. 



In the Arctic field there has been con- 

 tinued activity. 



Abruzzi, the able and energetic young 

 Italian duke, has in a splendid and 

 effective dash recorded the nearest ap- 

 proach to the Pole, and has by his ex- 

 perience eliminated Franz Josef Land 

 from further consideration as a polar 

 base. 



Such type of young man, possessing 

 already the prestige of a distinguished 

 name, devoting his time, his abilities, 

 his personal means to the advancement 

 of human knowledge, instead of wast- 

 ing them upon idle amusement, com- 

 mands my highest admiration. 



The expeditions of Sverdrup and 

 Peary have returned from their four 

 years' absence — one with a magnificent 

 delineation of that previous great gap 

 in Arctic charts, the unknown regions 

 west of EUsmere Land ; the other with 

 the delimitation of the northern termi- 

 nus of the Greenland Archipelago, the 

 most northerly known land in the world. 



Mr Ziegler, with commendable, but, 

 I fear, misdirected persistence, is push- 

 ing his attack upon the Pole via Franz 



