Honors for Amundsen 



63 



GEOGRAPHY IS THE TELEPHONE EXCHANGE 

 OF THE SCIENCES 



And, lastly, geography has the unique 

 interest of being the meeting point of the 

 sciences of nature and the sciences of 

 man. What is it, indeed, except a record 

 of all those forms of natural environment 

 which have made man what he is ; which 

 have guided his development ; which have 

 caused the differences of races ; which at 

 every point have influenced his march in 

 one direction or another ; which have 

 given him the various forms of institu- 

 tions ; which have developed certain fac- 

 ulties in certain races along certain lines, 

 and which have impressed upon the 

 divers stocks of mankind as they stand 

 now that variety in which the interest of 

 the study of human nature so largely con- 

 sists. It is this which makes geography 

 the center to which the sciences of nature 

 on the one hand and the sciences of man 

 on the other converge. 



Perhaps the greatest progress that has 

 been made of late years in the study of 

 history has consisted in bringing to bear 

 upon it all the data which geography sup- 

 plies, and in showing how much every na- 

 tion has owed and must continue to owe 

 to the geographical conditions under 

 which it lives. The relations of geog- 

 raphy to history make a fascinating sub- 

 ject, and if we had not many speeches 

 looming up before us tonight I could will- 

 ingly have followed it out. 



There is just one drawback or defect 

 which it has seemed to me attaches to this 

 our favorite science. Its range is limited 

 and is being narrowed. The field open to 

 the geographer is no longer, as it might 

 have been called five hundred years ago, 

 practically infinite and inexhaustible. On 

 the contrary, we are using up the world 

 very fast. I suppose some of the mem- 

 bers present remember what the maps of 

 the world were like sixty years ago. I 

 recollect when the whole center of Africa 

 was practically a blank. In the middle of 

 it there were marked upon the map a 

 number of little hillocks, meant to indi- 

 cate the mountains of the Moon, with 

 figures of lions and elephants scattered 



here and there. Now the Ruwenzori has 

 actually been climbed. 



I remember an ancient terrestrial 

 globe, twirling which and poring over it 

 as it twirled I spent many happy hours, 

 which showed for northwestern America 

 scarcely anything except lines marking 

 the voyages of Cook and Vancouver, and 

 for northeastern Asia very little except 

 the lines which traced the voyages of 

 your illustrious countryman, Mr Am- 

 bassador from France, the famous navi- 

 gator La Perouse. 



But things have been greatly altered. 

 Now there is no part of the earth's sur- 

 face about which we do not know a great 

 deal. Hardly anything is left for the 

 imagination. Moreover, in those days 

 the literary traveler was able to tell any 

 traveler's tale he pleased. Those of you 

 who have written books of travel, and I 

 have no doubt there are some present, 

 well know what is the temptation to the 

 author to improve upon and amplify what 

 he has seen in a little-known country. 

 When I think of what that temptation is 

 and of how often one has to abstain from 

 exaggerating and giving a better turn to 

 something one has seen, I feel like Lord 

 Clive when, in describing the enormous 

 opportunities he had had of increasing his 

 wealth at the expense of the people he 

 was conquering in India, he said, "I stand 

 amazed at my own moderation." 



The travelers of the future will have no 

 such chance as some of us have had and 

 some of us have used, let us hope, with 

 moderation in embellishing the narra- 

 tives of our explorations. I am afraid 

 that the poets and all those who need im- 

 agination, who use imagination in 

 literature, must suffer where there is 

 nothing unknown left in the world. 

 But we must make the best of it. 

 We must recognize that our planet after 

 all is limited. What you must begin to 

 do is what has to be done in those parts 

 of the West when the good lands have all 

 been taken up and when it is impossible 

 any longer to get virgin soil for cultiva- 

 tion. You must begin to apply intensive 

 methods of cultivation. You must ex- 

 amine all your territory more thoroughly, 



