Tides in the Bay of Fundy 



Why does Japan wish to expand in ter- 

 ritory ? We need only study the phys- 

 ical character of Japan to know. Why 

 is Nevada such a backward state, and 

 why is Arizona such an unpromising 

 candidate for statehood ? Here again 

 geography can give an answer. Why 

 did the negro race in central Africa re- 

 main for ages in an isolated, uncivilized, 

 undeveloped condition ? To answer 

 that fully one must take account of the 

 Sahara desert on the north and the great 

 forest belt which follows in a wide, deep 

 margin the west African coast. 



Yet geography, with most people, has 

 always been a "dry" study. Jnst why 

 this is so might be discussed, perhaps, 

 so as to yield interesting conclusions. 

 Possibly, as taught for so long in the 

 past, it was too unreal, too make-believe, 

 too artificial to arouse interest, especially 

 the interest of those with little imagina- 

 tion. The north was always up, the 

 south down, the east at the right and 

 the west at the left of the page. To 

 be sure, the earth was round, with flat- 

 tened poles, because the book said so ; 

 yet what one in a thousand, since the 

 globular condition of the earth was 

 accepted as a fact by the civilized 

 world, has easily comprehended the sig- 

 nificance of the great and small circles 



as to distances over continents and 

 oceans ? Then, too, the misconceptions 

 one may draw from the ordinary maps 

 are enormous, as Lord Salisbury inti- 

 mated so strongly. We are so accus- 

 tomed to large maps of our little corners 

 of the earth that when we see maps of 

 Asia, or Africa, made of the same size, 

 our ideas as to the extent of those re- 

 gious go hopelessly astray. When some 

 one comes along and tells us how many 

 Frances or Germanys or Englands could 

 be embraced within the boundaries of 

 Tibet, we are well-nigh upset. When 

 President Roosevelt talks about ' ' the 

 mastery of the 'Pacific,' " not one Amer- 

 ican in 500 can conceive the proposition 

 in terms of geography, and geography 

 has a tremendous lot to do with inter- 

 national politics. 



It is said that geography is still largely 

 a monopoly of the German schools ; in 

 England, they are poorly off, according 

 to the complaints lately made in the 

 London press. It is encouraging, how- 

 ever, to note a growing insistence every- 

 where upon fuller geographical knowl- 

 edge and more nearly correct geograph- 

 ical ideas. No one can be a man or 

 woman of real education and culture in 

 the future to whom geography, in no 

 narrow sense, is virtually a closed book. 



TIDES IN THE 



THE accompanying plates of high 

 and low tides in the Bay of 

 Fundy are enlarged from pho- 

 tographs taken by Mr Roland Hay ward, 

 of Milton, Mass. , in the summer of 1903. 

 The views are of double value — first, in 

 showing tides of unusual strength, and, 

 again, in being taken from the same 

 points for both high and low tides. The 

 following general statements are from 

 an article by Chalmers in the Report of 

 the Geological Survey of Canada for 

 1894 (1895): 



BAY OF FUNDY 



The mouth of the bay is 48 miles 

 wide and from 70 to 1 10 fathoms deep. 

 The bottom rises at a rate of 4 feet to a 

 mile for 145 miles, to the head of the 

 bay. On the coast near the mouth the 

 spring tides vary from 12 to 18 feet. 

 Within the bay the spring and neap 

 tides are as follows: Digby Neck, 22, 18; 

 St John, 27, 23 ; Petitcodiac River, 

 46, 36 ; Cumberland Basin, 44, 35 ; Noel 

 River, in Cobequid Bay, 53, 31. The 

 last named is, according to Chalmers, 

 the greatest tidal range authentically 



