466 THE RATIONAL ELEMENT IN GEOGRAPHY 



to get steering way. Some day an artist will take a summer's 

 outing on the Stikine* and with pencil and palette make its gla- 

 ciers famous. It is delightful to sit on the upper deck of one 

 of the river steamers in the mellow light of evening and shoot 

 down the swollen stream long after the sun has dipped behind 

 the mountains. By 9 in the evening the untrodden peaks of the 

 giant mountains are still a rosy red ; at 10 o'clock, in an arrested 

 riot of jagged ridge and crest, they stand forth distinctly in line 

 and color against the pink sky-line. Here and there long gran- 

 ite claws, picked clean by glaciers of a past age, run down into 

 the lowlands and are lost there. But best to be observed are 

 the glaciers of the present day. High upon the summits the 

 everlasting snow gleams spotless in the fading light ; lower down 

 rise the jagged pinnacles and upheaved billows of the glacier 

 itself, a study in blue ; while below it and nourished by its waters 

 lies the dark-green spruce forest fringing the banks of the rush- 

 ing river. By midnight detail and color are lost in dusky 

 shadows, but the rose-colored light still lingers mayhap before 

 the traveler's eyes as he realizes that he is speeding southward 

 to home and to civilization. 



THE RATIONAL ELEMENT IN GEOGRAPHY 



By W. M. Davis, 



Professor of Physical Geography in Harvard University 



Abundant conference and correspondence with teachers of ail 

 grades in recent years make it evident that the introduction of 

 the " causal notion in geography," as McMurry has phrased it, 

 is warmly welcomed wherever it is well understood. The tradi- 

 tional lists of capes are doubtless still memorized and recited in 

 some schools, to the exclusion of examples involving explana- 

 tion and correlation as elements of geographical study ; but such 

 schools do not rouse the pride of progressive superintendents. 

 Enterprising teachers are constantly striving toward a more ra- 

 tional treatment of geography, and with every advance in their 

 own understanding of its problems empirical statements are re- 

 placed by reasonable explanations in their teaching, much to 

 the advantage of the scholars. 



* In the January, 1800, number of The National Geographic Magazine is an excellent 

 description of the Stikine river by Miss E. R. Scidmore. 



