# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Geography

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​GEOGRAPHY (Gr. γῆ, earth, and γράφειν, to write), the exact and organized knowledge of the distribution of phenomena on the surface of the earth. The fundamental basis of geography is the vertical relief of the earth’s crust, which controls all mobile distributions. The grander features of the relief of the lithosphere or stony crust of the earth control the distribution of the hydrosphere or collected waters which gather into the hollows, filling them up to a height corresponding to the volume, and thus producing the important practical division of the surface into land and water. The distribution of the mass of the atmosphere over the surface of the earth is also controlled by the relief of the crust, its greater or lesser density at the surface corresponding to the lesser or greater elevation of the surface. The simplicity of the zonal distribution of solar energy on the earth’s surface, which would characterize a uniform globe, is entirely destroyed by the dissimilar action of land and water with regard to radiant heat, and by the influence of crust-forms on the direction of the resulting circulation. The influence of physical environment becomes clearer and stronger when the distribution of plant and animal life is considered, and if it is less distinct in the case of man, the reason is found in the modifications of environment consciously produced by human effort. Geography is a synthetic science, dependent for the data with which it deals on the results of specialized sciences such as astronomy, geology, oceanography, meteorology, biology and anthropology, as well as on topographical description. The physical and natural sciences are concerned in geography only so far as they deal with the forms of the earth’s surface, or as regards the distribution of phenomena. The distinctive task of geography as a science is to investigate the control exercised by the crust-forms directly or indirectly upon the various mobile distributions. This gives to it unity and definiteness, and renders superfluous the attempts that have been made from time to time to define the limits which divide geography from geology on the one hand and from history on the other. It is essential to classify the subject-matter of geography in such a manner as to give prominence not only to facts, but to their mutual relations and their natural and inevitable order.
The fundamental conception of geography is form, including ​ the figure of the earth and the varieties of crustal relief. Hence mathematical geography (see Map), including cartography as a practical application, comes first. It merges into physical geography, which takes account of the forms of the lithosphere (geomorphology), and also of the distribution of the hydrosphere and the rearrangements resulting from the workings of solar energy throughout the hydrosphere and atmosphere (oceanography and climatology). Next follows the distribution of plants and animals (biogeography), and finally the distribution of mankind and the various artificial boundaries and redistributions (anthropogeography). The applications of anthropogeography to human uses give rise to political and commercial geography, in the elucidation of which all the earlier departments or stages have to be considered, together with historical and other purely human conditions. The evolutionary idea has revolutionized and unified geography as it did biology, breaking down the old hard-and-fast partitions between the various departments, and substituting the study of the nature and influence of actual terrestrial environments for the earlier motive, the discovery and exploration of new lands.
History of Geographical Theory
The earliest conceptions of the earth, like those held by the primitive peoples of the present day, are difficult to discover and almost impossible fully to grasp. Early generalizations, as far as they were made from known facts, were usually expressed in symbolic language, and for our present purpose it is not profitable to speculate on the underlying truths which may sometimes be suspected in the old mythological cosmogonies.
The first definite geographical theories to affect the western world were those evolved, or at least first expressed, by the Greeks. The earliest theoretical problem of geography was the form of the earth. The natural supposition that the earth is a flat disk, circular or elliptical in outline, had in the Early Greek ideas. Flat earth of Homer. time of Homer acquired a special definiteness by the introduction of the idea of the ocean river bounding the whole, an application of imperfectly understood observations. Thales of Miletus is claimed as the first exponent of the idea of a spherical earth; but, although this does not appear to be warranted, his disciple Anaximander (c. 580 B.C.) put forward the theory that the earth had the figure of a solid body hanging freely in the centre of the hollow sphere of the starry heavens. The Pythagorean school of philosophers adopted the theory of a spherical earth, but from metaphysical rather than scientific reasons; their convincing argument was that a sphere being the most perfect solid figure was the only one worthy to circumscribe the dwelling-place of man. The division of the sphere into parallel zones and some of the consequences of this generalization seem to have presented themselves to Parmenides (c. 450 B.C.); but these ideas did not influence the Ionian school of philosophers, who in their treatment of geography preferred to deal with facts demonstrable by travel rather than with speculations. Thus Hecataeus, claimed by H. F. Tozer as the father of geography on account of his Periodos, or general treatise on the earth, did not advance beyond the primitive conception of a circular disk. He systematized the form of the land within the ring of ocean—theHecataeus. Herodotus. The idea of symmetry. οἰκουμένη, or habitable world—by recognizing two continents: Europe to the north, and Asia to the south of the midland sea. Herodotus, equally oblivious of the sphere, criticized and ridiculed the circular outline of the oekumene, which he knew to be longer from east to west than it was broad from north to south. He also pointed out reasons for accepting a division of the land into three continents—Europe, Asia and Africa. Beyond the limits of his personal travels Herodotus applied the characteristically Greek theory of symmetry to complete, in the unknown, outlines of lands and rivers analogous to those which had been explored. Symmetry was in fact the first geographical theory, and the effect of Herodotus’s hypothesis that the Nile must flow from west to east before turning north in order to balance the Danube running from west to east before turning south lingered in the maps of Africa down to the time of Mungo Park.
To Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) must be given the distinction of founding scientific geography. He demonstrated the sphericity of the earth by three arguments, two of which could be tested by observation. These were: (1) that the earth must be spherical, because of the tendency of matter to fall together towards a common Aristotle and the sphere.centre; (2) that only a sphere could always throw a circular shadow on the moon during an eclipse; and (3) that the shifting of the horizon and the appearance of new constellations, or the disappearance of familiar stars, as one travelled from north to south, could only be explained on the hypothesis that the earth was a sphere. Aristotle, too, gave greater definiteness to the idea of zones conceived by Parmenides, who had pictured a torrid zone uninhabitable by reason of heat, two frigid zones uninhabitable by reason of cold, and two intermediate temperate zones fit for human occupation. Aristotle defined the temperate zone as extending from the tropic to the arctic circle, but there is some uncertainty as to the precise meaning he gave to the term “arctic circle.” Soon after his time, however, this conception was clearly established, and with so large a generalization the mental horizon was widened to conceive of a geography which was a science. Aristotle had himself shown that in the southern temperate zone winds similar to those of the northern temperate zone should blow, but from the opposite direction.
While the theory of the sphere was being elaborated the efforts of practical geographers were steadily directed towards ascertaining the outline and configuration of the oekumene, or habitable world, the only portion of the terrestrial surface known to the ancients and to the medieval peoples, and still Fitting the oekumene to the sphere. retaining a shadow of its old monopoly of geographical attention in its modern name of the “Old World.” The fitting of the oekumene to the sphere was the second theoretical problem. The circular outline had given way in geographical opinion to the elliptical with the long axis lying east and west, and Aristotle was inclined to view it as a very long and relatively narrow band almost encircling the globe in the temperate zone. His argument as to the narrowness of the sea between West Africa and East Asia, from the occurrence of elephants at both extremities, is difficult to understand, although it shows that he looked on the distribution of animals as a problem of geography.
Pythagoras had speculated as to the existence of antipodes, but it was not until the first approximately accurate measurements of the globe and estimates of the length and breadth of the oekumene were made by Eratosthenes (c. 250 B.C.) that the fact that, as then known, it occupied less than a quarter Problem of the Antipodes. of the surface of the sphere was clearly recognized. It was natural, if not strictly logical, that the ocean river should be extended from a narrow stream to a world-embracing sea, and here again Greek theory, or rather fancy, gave its modern name to the greatest feature of the globe. The old instinctive idea of symmetry must often have suggested other oekumene balancing the known world in the other quarters of the globe. The Stoic philosophers, especially Crates of Mallus, arguing from the love of nature for life, placed an oekumene in each quarter of the sphere, the three unknown world-islands being those of the Antoeci, Perioeci and Antipodes. This was a theory not only attractive to the philosophical mind, but eminently adapted to promote exploration. It had its opponents, however, for Herodotus showed that sea-basins existed cut off from the ocean, and it is still a matter of controversy how far the pre-Ptolemaic geographers believed in a water-connexion between the Atlantic and Indian oceans. It is quite clear that Pomponius Mela (c. A.D. 40), following Strabo, held that the southern temperate zone contained a habitable land, which he designated by the name Antichthones.
Aristotle left no work on geography, so that it is impossible to know what facts he associated with the science of the earth’s surface. The word geography did not appear before Aristotle, the first use of it being in the Περὶ κόσμων, which is one of the writings doubtfully ascribed to him, and H. Berger Aristotle’s geographical views. considers that the expression was introduced by Eratosthenes. Aristotle was certainly conversant with many facts, such as the formation of deltas, coast-erosion, and to a certain extent the dependence of plants and animals on their physical surroundings. He formed a comprehensive theory of the variations of climate with latitude and season, and was convinced of the necessity of a circulation of water between the sea and rivers, though, like Plato, he held that this took place by water rising from the sea through crevices in the rocks, losing its dissolved salts in the process. He speculated on the differences in the character of races of mankind living in different climates, and correlated the political forms of communities with their situation on a seashore, or in the neighbourhood of natural strongholds.
Strabo (c. 50 B.C.–A.D. 24) followed Eratosthenes rather than Aristotle, but with sympathies which went out more to the human interests than the mathematical basis of geography. He compiled a very remarkable work dealing, in large measure from personal travel, with the countries surrounding the Mediterranean. Strabo. He may be said to have set the pattern which was followed in succeeding ages by the compilers of “political geographies” ​ dealing less with theories than with facts, and illustrating rather than formulating the principles of the science.
Claudius Ptolemaeus (c. A.D. 150) concentrated in his writings the final outcome of all Greek geographical learning, and passed it across the gulf of the middle ages by the hands of the Arabs, to form the starting-point of the science in modern times. His geography was based more immediately on the work of his Ptolemy. predecessor, Marinus of Tyre, and on that of Hipparchus, the follower and critic of Eratosthenes. It was the ambition of Ptolemy to describe and represent accurately the surface of the oekumene, for which purpose he took immense trouble to collect all existing determinations of the latitude of places, all estimates of longitude, and to make every possible rectification in the estimates of distances by land or sea. His work was mainly cartographical in its aim, and theory was as far as possible excluded. The symmetrically placed hypothetical islands in the great continuous ocean disappeared, and the oekumene acquired a new form by the representation of the Indian Ocean as a larger Mediterranean completely cut off by land from the Atlantic. The terra incognita uniting Africa and Farther Asia was an unfortunate hypothesis which helped to retard exploration. Ptolemy used the word geography to signify the description of the whole oekumene on mathematical principles, while chorography signified the fuller description of a particular region, and topography the very detailed description of a smaller locality. He introduced the simile that geography represented an artist’s sketch of a whole portrait, while chorography corresponded to the careful and detailed drawing of an eye or an ear.
The Caliph al-Mamūn (c. A.D. 815), the son and successor of Hārūn al-Rashīd, caused an Arabic version of Ptolemy’s great astronomical work (Σύνταξις μεγίστη) to be made, which is known as the Almagest, the word being nothing more than the Gr. μεγίστη with the Arabic article al prefixed. The geography of Ptolemy was also known and is constantly referred to by Arab writers. The Arab astronomers measured a degree on the plains of Mesopotamia, thereby deducing a fair approximation to the size of the earth. The caliph’s librarian, Abu Jafar Muhammad Ben Musa, wrote a geographical work, now unfortunately lost, entitled Rasm el Arsi (“A Description of the World”), which is often referred to by subsequent writers as having been composed on the model of that of Ptolemy.
The middle ages saw geographical knowledge die out in Christendom, although it retained, through the Arabic translations of Ptolemy, a certain vitality in Islam. The verbal interpretation of Scripture led Lactantius (c. A.D. 320) and other ecclesiastics to denounce the spherical theory of the Geography in the middle ages. earth as heretical. The wretched subterfuge of Cosmas (c. A.D. 550) to explain the phenomena of the apparent movements of the sun by means of an earth modelled on the plan of the Jewish Tabernacle gave place ultimately to the wheel-maps—the T in an O—which reverted to the primitive ignorance of the times of Homer and Hecataeus.
The journey of Marco Polo, the increasing trade to the East and the voyages of the Arabs in the Indian Ocean prepared the way for the reacceptance of Ptolemy’s ideas when the sealed books of the Greek original were translated into Latin by Angelus in 1410.
The old arguments of Aristotle and the old measurements of Ptolemy were used by Toscanelli and Columbus in urging a westward voyage to India; and mainly on this account did the crossing of the Atlantic rank higher in the history of scientific geography than the laborious feeling out of the Revival of geography. coast-line of Africa. But not until the voyage of Magellan shook the scales from the eyes of Europe did modern geography begin to advance. Discovery had outrun theory; the rush of new facts made Ptolemy practically obsolete in a generation, after having been the fount and origin of all geography for a millennium.
The earliest evidence of the reincarnation of a sound theoretical geography is to be found in the text-books by Peter Apian and Sebastian Münster. Apian in his Cosmographicus liber, published in 1524, and subsequently edited and added to by Gemma Frisius under the title of Cosmographia, based the whole Apianus. science on mathematics and measurement. He followed Ptolemy closely, enlarging on his distinction between geography and chorography, and expressing the artistic analogy in a rough diagram. This slender distinction was made much of by most subsequent writers until Nathanael Carpenter in 1625 pointed out that the difference between geography and chorography was simply one of degree, not of kind.
Sebastian Münster, on the other hand, in his Cosmographia universalis of 1544, paid no regard to the mathematical basis of geography, but, following the model of Strabo, described the world according to its different political divisions, and entered with great zest into the question of the productions Münster. of countries, and into the manners and costumes of the various peoples. Thus early commenced the separation between what were long called mathematical and political geography, the one subject appealing mainly to mathematicians, the other to historians.
Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries the rapidly accumulating store of facts as to the extent, outline and mountain and river systems of the lands of the earth were put in order by the generation of cartographers of which Mercator was the chief; but the writings of Apian and Münster held the field for a hundred years without a serious rival, unless the many annotated editions of Ptolemy might be so considered. Meanwhile the new facts were the subject of original study by philosophers and by practical men without reference to classical traditions. Bacon argued keenly on geographical matters and was a lover of maps, in which he observed and reasoned upon such resemblances as that between the outlines of South America and Africa.
Philip Cluver’s Introductio in geographiam universam tam veterem quam novam was published in 1624. Geography he defined as “the description of the whole earth, so far as it is known to us.” It is distinguished from cosmography by dealing with the earth alone, not with the universe, and from chorography Cluverius. and topography by dealing with the whole earth, not with a country or a place. The first book, of fourteen short chapters, is concerned with the general properties of the globe; the remaining six books treat in considerable detail of the countries of Europe and of the other continents. Each country is described with particular regard to its people as well as to its surface, and the prominence given to the human element is of special interest.
A little-known book which appears to have escaped the attention of most writers on the history of modern geography was published at Oxford in 1625 by Nathanael Carpenter, fellow of Exeter College, with the title Geographie delineated forth in Two Bookes, containing the Sphericall and Topicall parts thereof. Carpenter. It is discursive in its style and verbose; but, considering the period at which it appeared, it is remarkable for the strong common sense displayed by the author, his comparative freedom from prejudice, and his firm application of the methods of scientific reasoning to the interpretation of phenomena. Basing his work on the principles of Ptolemy, he brings together illustrations from the most recent travellers, and does not hesitate to take as illustrative examples the familiar city of Oxford and his native county of Devon. He divides geography into The Spherical Part, or that for the study of which mathematics alone is required, and The Topical Part, or the description of the physical relations of parts of the earth’s surface, preferring this division to that favoured by the ancient geographers—into general and special. It is distinguished from other English geographical books of the period by confining attention to the principles of geography, and not describing the countries of the world.
A much more important work in the history of geographical method is the Geographia generalis of Bernhard Varenius, a German medical doctor of Leiden, who died at the age of twenty-eight in 1650, the year of the publication of his book. Although for a time it was lost sight of on the continent, Sir Isaac Varenius. Newton thought so highly of this book that he prepared an annotated edition which was published in Cambridge in 1672, with the addition of the plates which had been planned by Varenius, but not produced by the original publishers. “The reason why this great man took so much care in correcting and publishing our author was, because he thought him necessary to be read by his audience, the young gentlemen of Cambridge, while he was delivering lectures on the same subject from the Lucasian Chair.” The treatise of Varenius is a model of logical arrangement and terse expression; it is a work of science and of genius; one of the few of that age which can still be studied with profit. The English translation renders the definition thus: “Geography is that part of mixed mathematics which explains the state of the earth and of its parts, depending on quantity, viz. its figure, place, magnitude and motion, with the celestial appearances, &c. By some it is taken in too limited a sense, for a bare description of the several countries; and by others too extensively, who along with such a description would have their political constitution.”
Varenius was reluctant to include the human side of geography in his system, and only allowed it as a concession to custom, and in order to attract readers by imparting interest to the sterner details of the science. His division of geography was into two parts—(i.) General or universal, dealing with the earth in general, and explaining its properties without regard to particular countries; and (ii.) Special or particular, dealing with each country in turn from the chorographical or topographical point of view. General geography was divided into—(1) the Absolute part, dealing with the form, dimensions, position and substance of the earth, the distribution of land and water, mountains, woods and deserts, hydrography (including all the waters of the earth) and the atmosphere; (2) the Relative part, including the celestial properties, i.e. latitude, climate zones, longitude, &c.; and (3) the Comparative part, which “considers the ​particulars arising from comparing one part with another”; but under this head the questions discussed were longitude, the situation and distances of places, and navigation. Varenius does not treat of special geography, but gives a scheme for it under three heads—(1) Terrestrial, including position, outline, boundaries, mountains, mines, woods and deserts, waters, fertility and fruits, and living creatures; (2) Celestial, including appearance of the heavens and the climate; (3) Human, but this was added out of deference to popular usage.
This system of geography founded a new epoch, and the book—translated into English, Dutch and French—was the unchallenged standard for more than a century. The framework was capable of accommodating itself to new facts, and was indeed far in advance of the knowledge of the period. The method included a recognition of the causes and effects of phenomena as well as the mere fact of their occurrence, and for the first time the importance of the vertical relief of the land was fairly recognized.
The physical side of geography continued to be elaborated after Varenius’s methods, while the historical side was developed separately. Both branches, although enriched by new facts, remained stationary so far as method is concerned until nearly the end of the 18th century. The compilation of “geography books” by uninstructed writers led to the pernicious habit, which is not yet wholly overcome, of reducing the general or “physical” part to a few pages of concentrated information, and expanding the particular or “political” part by including unrevised travellers’ stories and uncritical descriptions of the various countries of the world. Such books were in fact not geography, but merely compressed travel.
The next marked advance in the theory of geography may be taken as the nearly simultaneous studies of the physical earth carried out by the Swedish chemist, Torbern Bergman, acting under the impulse of Linnaeus, and by the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Bergman’s Physical Description of Bergman. the Earth was published in Swedish in 1766, and translated into English in 1772 and into German in 1774. It is a plain, straightforward description of the globe, and of the various phenomena of the surface, dealing only with definitely ascertained facts in the natural order of their relationships, but avoiding any systematic classification or even definitions of terms.
The problems of geography had been lightened by the destructive criticism of the French cartographer D’Anville (who had purged the map of the world of the last remnants of traditional fact unverified by modern observations) and rendered richer by the dawn of the new era of scientific Kant.travel, when Kant brought his logical powers to bear upon them. Kant’s lectures on physical geography were delivered in the university of Königsberg from 1765 onwards. Geography appealed to him as a valuable educational discipline, the joint foundation with anthropology of that “knowledge of the world” which was the result of reason and experience. In this connexion he divided the communication of experience from one person to another into two categories—the narrative or historical and the descriptive or geographical; both history and geography being viewed as descriptions, the former a description in order of time, the latter a description in order of space.
Physical geography he viewed as a summary of nature, the basis not only of history but also of “all the other possible geographies,” of which he enumerates five, viz. (1) Mathematical geography, which deals with the form, size and movements of the earth and its place in the solar system; (2) Moral geography, or an account of the different customs and characters of mankind according to the region they inhabit; (3) Political geography, the divisions according to their organized governments; (4) Mercantile geography, dealing with the trade in the surplus products of countries; (5) Theological geography, or the distribution of religions. Here there is a clear and formal statement of the interaction and causal relation of all the phenomena of distribution on the earth’s surface, including the influence of physical geography upon the various activities of mankind from the lowest to the highest. Notwithstanding the form of this classification, Kant himself treats mathematical geography as preliminary to, and therefore not dependent on, physical geography. Physical geography itself is divided into two parts: a general, which has to do with the earth and all that belongs to it—water, air and land; and a particular, which deals with special products of the earth—mankind, animals, plants and minerals. Particular importance is given to the vertical relief of the land, on which the various branches of human geography are shown to depend.
Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was the first modern geographer to become a great traveller, and thus to acquire an extensive stock of first-hand information on which an improved system of geography might be founded. The impulse given to the study of natural history by the example of Linnaeus; Humboldt. the results brought back by Sir Joseph Banks, Dr Solander and the two Forsters, who accompanied Cook in his voyages of discovery; the studies of De Saussure in the Alps, and the lists of desiderata in physical geography drawn up by that investigator, combined to prepare the way for Humboldt. The theory of geography was advanced by Humboldt mainly by his insistence on the great principle of the unity of nature. He brought all the “observable things,” which the eager collectors of the previous century had been heaping together regardless of order or system, into relation with the vertical relief and the horizontal forms of the earth’s surface. Thus he demonstrated that the forms of the land exercise a directive and determining influence on climate, plant life, animal life and on man himself. This was no new idea; it had been familiar for centuries in a less definite form, deduced from a priori considerations, and so far as regards the influence of surrounding circumstances upon man, Kant had already given it full expression. Humboldt’s concrete illustrations and the remarkable power of his personality enabled him to enforce these principles in a way that produced an immediate and lasting effect. The treatises on physical geography by Mrs Mary Somerville and Sir John Herschel (the latter written for the eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica) showed the effect produced in Great Britain by the stimulus of Humboldt’s work.
Humboldt’s contemporary, Carl Ritter (1779–1859), extended and disseminated the same views, and in his interpretation of “Comparative Geography” he laid stress on the importance of forming conclusions, not from the study of one region by itself, but from the comparison of the phenomena of many places. Ritter. Impressed by the influence of terrestrial relief and climate on human movements, Ritter was led deeper and deeper into the study of history and archaeology. His monumental Vergleichende Geographie, which was to have made the whole world its theme, died out in a wilderness of detail in twenty-one volumes before it had covered more of the earth’s surface than Asia and a portion of Africa. Some of his followers showed a tendency to look on geography rather as an auxiliary to history than as a study of intrinsic worth.
During the rapid development of physical geography many branches of the study of nature, which had been included in the cosmography of the early writers, the physiography of Linnaeus and even the Erdkunde of Ritter, had been so much advanced by the labours of specialists Geography as a natural science.that their connexion was apt to be forgotten. Thus geology, meteorology, oceanography and anthropology developed into distinct sciences. The absurd attempt was, and sometimes is still, made by geographers to include all natural science in geography; but it is more common for specialists in the various detailed sciences to think, and sometimes to assert, that the ground of physical geography is now fully occupied by these sciences. Political geography has been too often looked on from both sides as a mere summary of guide-book knowledge, useful in the schoolroom, a poor relation of physical geography that it was rarely necessary to recognize.
The science of geography, passed on from antiquity by Ptolemy, re-established by Varenius and Newton, and systematized by Kant, included within itself definite aspects of all those terrestrial phenomena which are now treated exhaustively under the heads of geology, meteorology, oceanography and anthropology; and the inclusion of the requisite portions of the perfected results of these sciences in geography is simply the gathering in of fruit matured from the seed scattered by geography itself.
The study of geography was advanced by improvements in cartography (see Map), not only in the methods of survey and projection, but in the representation of the third dimension by means of contour lines introduced by Philippe Buache in 1737, and the more remarkable because less obvious invention of isotherms introduced by Humboldt in 1817.
The “argument from design” had been a favourite form of reasoning amongst Christian theologians, and, as worked out by Paley in his Natural Theology, it served the useful purpose of emphasizing the fitness which exists between all the inhabitants of the earth and their physical The teleological argument in geography.environment. It was held that the earth had been created so as to fit the wants of man in every particular. This argument was tacitly accepted or explicitly avowed by almost every writer on the theory of geography, and Carl Ritter distinctly recognized and adopted it as the unifying principle of his system. As a student of nature, however, he did not fail to see, and as professor of geography he always taught, that man was in very large measure conditioned by his physical environment. The apparent opposition of the observed fact to the assigned theory he overcame by looking upon the forms of the land and the arrangement of land and sea as instruments of Divine Providence for guiding the destiny as well as for supplying the requirements of man. This was the central theme of Ritter’s philosophy; his religion and his geography were one, and the consequent fervour with which he pursued his mission goes far to account for the immense influence he acquired in Germany.
The evolutionary theory, more than hinted at in Kant’s “Physical Geography,” has, since the writings of Charles Darwin, become the unifying principle in geography. The conception of the development of the plan of the earth from the first cooling of the surface of the planet throughout the long The theory of evolution in geography. geological periods, the guiding power of environment on the circulation of water and of air, on the distribution of plants and animals, and finally on the movements of man, give to geography a philosophical dignity and a scientific completeness ​which it never previously possessed. The influence of environment on the organism may not be quite so potent as it was once believed to be, in the writings of Buckle, for instance, and certainly man, the ultimate term in the series, reacts upon and greatly modifies his environment; yet the fact that environment does influence all distributions is established beyond the possibility of doubt. In this way also the position of geography, at the point where physical science meets and mingles with mental science, is explained and justified. The change which took place during the 19th century in the substance and style of geography may be well seen by comparing the eight volumes of Malte-Brun’s Géographie universelle (Paris, 1812–1829) with the twenty-one volumes of Reclus’s Géographie universelle (Paris, 1876–1895).
In estimating the influence of recent writers on geography it is usual to assign to Oscar Peschel (1826–1875) the credit of having corrected the preponderance which Ritter gave to the historical element, and of restoring physical geography to its old pre-eminence. As a matter of fact, each of the leading modern exponents of theoretical geography—such as Ferdinand von Richthofen, Hermann Wagner, Friedrich Ratzel, William M. Davis, A. Penck, A. de Lapparent and Elisée Reclus—has his individual point of view, one devoting more attention to the results of geological processes, another to anthropological conditions, and the rest viewing the subject in various blendings of the extreme lights.
The two conceptions which may now be said to animate the theory of geography are the genetic, which depends upon processes of origin, and the morphological, which depends on facts of form and distribution.
Progress of Geographical Discovery
Exploration and geographical discovery must have started from more than one centre, and to deal justly with the matter one ought to treat of these separately in the early ages before the whole civilized world was bound together by the bonds of modern intercommunication. At the least there should be some consideration of four separate systems of discovery—the Eastern, in which Chinese and Japanese explorers acquired knowledge of the geography of Asia, and felt their way towards Europe and America; the Western, in which the dominant races of the Mexican and South American plateaus extended their knowledge of the American continent before Columbus; the Polynesian, in which the conquering races of the Pacific Islands found their way from group to group; and the Mediterranean. For some of these we have no certain information, and regarding others the tales narrated in the early records are so hard to reconcile with present knowledge that they are better fitted to be the battle-ground of scholars championing rival theories than the basis of definite history. So it has come about that the only practicable history of geographical exploration starts from the Mediterranean centre, the first home of that civilization which has come to be known as European, though its field of activity has long since overspread the habitable land of both temperate zones, eastern Asia alone in part excepted.
From all centres the leading motives of exploration were probably the same—commercial intercourse, warlike operations, whether resulting in conquest or in flight, religious zeal expressed in pilgrimages or missionary journeys, or, from the other side, the avoidance of persecution, and, more particularly in later years, the advancement of knowledge for its own sake. At different times one or the other motive predominated.
Before the 14th century B.C. the warrior kings of Egypt had carried the power of their arms southward from the delta of the Nile well-nigh to its source, and eastward to the confines of Assyria. The hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt and the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria are rich in records of the movements and achievements of armies, the conquest of towns and the subjugation of peoples; but though many of the recorded sites have been identified, their discovery by wandering armies was isolated from their subsequent history and need not concern us here.
The Phoenicians are the earliest Mediterranean people in the consecutive chain of geographical discovery which joins prehistoric time with the present. From Sidon, and later from its more famous rival Tyre, the merchant adventurers of Phoenicia explored and colonized the coasts of the Mediterranean The Phoenicians. and fared forth into the ocean beyond. They traded also on the Red sea, and opened up regular traffic with India as well as with the ports of the south and west, so that it was natural for Solomon to employ the merchant navies of Tyre in his oversea trade. The western emporium known in the scriptures as Tarshish was probably situated in the south of Spain, possibly at Cadiz, although some writers contend that it was Carthage in North Africa. Still more diversity of opinion prevails as to the southern gold-exporting port of Ophir, which some scholars place in Arabia, others at one or another point on the east coast of Africa. Whether associated with the exploitation of Ophir (q.v.) or not the first great voyage of African discovery appears to have been accomplished by the Phoenicians sailing the Red sea. Herodotus (himself a notable traveller in the 5th century B.C.) relates that the Egyptian king Necho of the XXVIth Dynasty (c. 600 B.C.) built a fleet on the Red Sea, and confided it to Phoenician sailors with the orders to sail southward and return to Egypt by the Pillars of Hercules and the Mediterranean sea. According to the tradition, which Herodotus quotes sceptically, this was accomplished; but the story is too vague to be accepted as more than a possibility.
The great Phoenician colony of Carthage, founded before 800 B.C., perpetuated the commercial enterprise of the parent state, and extended the sphere of practical trade to the ocean shores of Africa and Europe. The most celebrated voyage of antiquity undertaken for the express purpose of discovery was that fitted out by the senate of Carthage under the command of Hanno, with the intention of founding new colonies along the west coast of Africa. According to Pliny, the only authority on this point, the period of the voyage was that of the greatest prosperity of Carthage, which may be taken as somewhere between 570 and 480 B.C. The extent of this voyage is doubtful, but it seems probable that the farthest point reached was on the east-running coast which bounds the Gulf of Guinea on the north. Himilco, a contemporary of Hanno, was charged with an expedition along the west coast of Iberia northward, and as far as the uncertain references to this voyage can be understood, he seems to have passed the Bay of Biscay and possibly sighted the coast of England.
The sea power of the Greek communities on the coast of Asia Minor and in the Archipelago began to be a formidable rival to the Phoenician soon after the time of Hanno and Himilco, and peculiar interest attaches to the first recorded Greek voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Pytheas, The Greeks.a navigator of the Phocean colony of Massilia (Marseilles), determined the latitude of that port with considerable precision by the somewhat clumsy method of ascertaining the length of the longest day, and when, about 330 B.C., he set out on exploration to the northward in search of the lands whence came gold, tin and amber, he followed this system of ascertaining his position from time to time. If on each occasion he himself made the observations his voyage must have extended over six years; but it is not impossible that he ascertained the approximate length of the longest day in some cases by questioning the natives. Pytheas, whose own narrative is not preserved, coasted the Bay of Biscay, sailed up the English Channel and followed the coast of Britain to its most northerly point. Beyond this he spoke of a land called Thule, which, if his estimate of the length of the longest day is correct, may have been Shetland, but was possibly Iceland; and from some confused statements as to a sea which could not be sailed through, it has been assumed that Pytheas was the first of the Greeks to obtain direct knowledge of the Arctic regions. During this or a second voyage Pytheas entered the Baltic, discovered the coasts where amber is obtained and returned to the Mediterranean. It does not seem that any maritime trade followed these discoveries, and indeed it is doubtful whether his contemporaries accepted the truth of Pytheas’s narrative; Strabo four hundred years later certainly did not, but the critical studies of modern scholars have rehabilitated the Massilian explorer.
The Greco-Persian wars had made the remoter parts of Asia Minor more than a name to the Greek geographers before the time of Alexander the Great, but the campaigns of that conqueror from 329 to 325 B.C. opened up the greater Asia to the knowledge of Europe. His armies crossed the plains Alexander the Great. beyond the Caspian, penetrated the wild mountain passes north-west of India, and did not turn back until they had entered on the Indo-Gangetic plain. This was one of the few great epochs of geographical discovery.
The world was henceforth viewed as a very large place stretching far on every side beyond the Midland or Mediterranean Sea, and the land journey of Alexander resulted in a voyage of discovery in the outer ocean from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Tigris, thus opening direct intercourse between Grecian and Hindu civilization. The Greeks who accompanied Alexander described with care the towns and villages, the products and the aspect of the country. The conqueror also intended to open up trade by sea between Europe and India, and the narrative of his general Nearchus records this famous voyage of discovery, the detailed accounts of the chief pilot Onesicritus being lost. At the beginning of October 326 B.C. Nearchus left the Indus with his fleet, and the anchorages sought for each night are carefully recorded. He entered the Persian Gulf, and rejoined Alexander at Susa, when he was ordered to prepare another expedition for the circumnavigation of Arabia. Alexander died at Babylon in 323 B.C., and the fleet was dispersed without making the voyage.
The dynasties founded by Alexander’s generals, Seleucus, Antiochus and Ptolemy, encouraged the same spirit of enterprise which their master had fostered, and extended geographical knowledge in several directions. Seleucus Nicator established the Greco-Bactrian empire and continued the intercourse with India. Authentic information respecting the great valley of the Ganges was supplied by Megasthenes, an ambassador sent by Seleucus, who reached the remote city of Patali-putra, the modern Patna.
The Ptolemies in Egypt showed equal anxiety to extend the bounds of geographical knowledge. Ptolemy Euergetes (247–222 B.C.) ​ rendered the greatest service to geography by the protection and encouragement of Eratosthenes, whose labours gave the first approximate knowledge of the true size of the spherical The Ptolemies.earth. The second Euergetes and his successor Ptolemy Lathyrus (118–115 B.C.) furnished Eudoxus with a fleet to explore the Arabian sea. After two successful voyages, Eudoxus, impressed with the idea that Africa was surrounded by ocean on the south, left the Egyptian service, and proceeded to Cadiz and other Mediterranean centres of trade seeking a patron who would finance an expedition for the purpose of African discovery; and we learn from Strabo that the veteran explorer made at least two voyages southward along the coast of Africa. The Ptolemies continued to send fleets annually from their Red Sea ports of Berenice and Myos Hormus to Arabia, as well as to ports on the coasts of Africa and India.
The Romans did not encourage navigation and commerce with the same ardour as their predecessors; still the luxury of Rome, which gave rise to demands for the varied products of all the countries of the known world, led to an active trade both by ships and caravans. But it was the military The Romans. genius of Rome, and the ambition for universal empire, which led, not only to the discovery, but also to the survey of nearly all Europe, and of large tracts in Asia and Africa. Every new war produced a new survey and itinerary of the countries which were conquered, and added one more to the imperishable roads that led from every quarter of the known world to Rome. In the height of their power the Romans had surveyed and explored all the coasts of the Mediterranean, Italy, Greece, the Balkan Peninsula, Spain, Gaul, western Germany and southern Britain. In Africa their empire included Egypt, Carthage, Numidia and Mauritania. In Asia they held Asia Minor and Syria, had sent expeditions into Arabia, and were acquainted with the more distant countries formerly invaded by Alexander, including Persia, Scythia, Bactria and India. Roman intercourse with India especially led to the extension of geographical knowledge.
Before the Roman legions were sent into a new region to extend the limits of the empire, it was usual to send out exploring expeditions to report as to the nature of the country. It is narrated by Pliny and Seneca that the emperor Nero sent out two centurions on such a mission towards the source of the Nile (probably about A.D. 60), and that the travellers pushed southwards until they reached vast marshes through which they could not make their way either on foot or in boats. This seems to indicate that they had penetrated to about 9° N. Shortly before A.D. 79 Hippalus took advantage of the regular alternation of the monsoons to make the voyage from the Red Sea to India across the open ocean out of sight of land. Even though this sea-route was known, the author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, published after the time of Pliny, recites the old itinerary around the coast of the Arabian Gulf. It was, however, in the reigns of Severus and his immediate successors that Roman intercourse with India was at its height, and from the writings of Pausanias (c. 174) it appears that direct communication between Rome and China had already taken place.
After the division of the Roman empire, Constantinople became the last refuge of learning, arts and taste; while Alexandria continued to be the emporium whence were imported the commodities of the East. The emperor Justinian (483–565), in whose reign the greatness of the Eastern empire culminated, sent two Nestorian monks to China, who returned with eggs of the silkworm concealed in a hollow cane, and thus silk manufactures were established in the Peloponnesus and the Greek islands. It was also in the reign of Justinian that Cosmas Indicopleustes, an Egyptian merchant, made several voyages, and afterwards composed his Χριστιανικὴ τοπογραφία (Christian Topography), containing, in addition to his absurd cosmogony, a tolerable description of India.
The great outburst of Mahommedan conquest in the 7th century was followed by the Arab civilization, having its centres at Bagdad and Cordova, in connexion with which geography again received a share of attention. The works of the ancient Greek geographers were translated into Arabic, and starting with a The Arabs. sound basis of theoretical knowledge, exploration once more made progress. From the 9th to the 13th century intelligent Arab travellers wrote accounts of what they had seen and heard in distant lands. The earliest Arabian traveller whose observations have come down to us is the merchant Sulaiman, who embarked in the Persian Gulf and made several voyages to India and China, in the middle of the 9th century. Abu Zaid also wrote on India, and his work is the most important that we possess before the epoch-making discoveries of Marco Polo. Masudi, a great traveller who knew from personal experience all the countries between Spain and China, described the plains, mountains and seas, the dynasties and peoples, in his Meadows of Gold, an abstract made by himself of his larger work News of the Time. He died in 956, and was known, from the comprehensiveness of his survey, as the Pliny of the East. Amongst his contemporaries were Istakhri, who travelled through all the Mahommedan countries and wrote his Book of Climates in 950, and Ibn Haukal, whose Book of Roads and Kingdoms, based on the work of Istakhri, was written in 976. Idrisi, the best known of the Arabian geographical authors, after travelling far and wide in the first half of the 12th century, settled in Sicily, where he wrote a treatise descriptive of an armillary sphere which he had constructed for Roger II., the Norman king, and in this work he incorporated all accessible results of contemporary travel.
The Northmen of Denmark and Norway, whose piratical adventures were the terror of all the coasts of Europe, and who established themselves in Great Britain and Ireland, in France and Sicily, were also geographical explorers in their rough but practical way during the darkest period of the middle ages. The Northmen. All Northmen were not bent on rapine and plunder; many were peaceful merchants. Alfred the Great, king of the Saxons in England, not only educated his people in the learning of the past ages; he inserted in the geographical works he translated many narratives of the travel of his own time. Thus he placed on record the voyages of the merchant Ulfsten in the Baltic, including particulars of the geography of Germany. And in particular he told of the remarkable voyage of Other, a Norwegian of Helgeland, who was the first authentic Arctic explorer, the first to tell of the rounding of the North Cape and the sight of the midnight sun. This voyage of the middle of the 9th century deserves to be held in happy memory, for it unites the first Norwegian polar explorer with the first English collector of travels. Scandinavian merchants brought the products of India to England and Ireland. From the 8th to the 11th century a commercial route from India passed through Novgorod to the Baltic, and Arabian coins found in Sweden, and particularly in the island of Gotland, prove how closely the enterprise of the Northmen and of the Arabs intertwined. Five-sixths of these coins preserved at Stockholm were from the mints of the Samanian dynasty, which reigned in Khorasan and Transoxiana from about A.D. 900 to 1000. It was the trade with the East that originally gave importance to the city of Visby in Gotland.
In the end of the 9th century Iceland was colonized from Norway; and about 985 the intrepid viking, Eric the Red, discovered Greenland, and induced some of his Icelandic countrymen to settle on its inhospitable shores. His son, Leif Ericsson, and others of his followers were concerned in the discovery of the North American coast (see Vinland), which, but for the isolation of Iceland from the centres of European awakening, would have had momentous consequences. As things were, the importance of this discovery passed unrecognized. The story of two Venetians, Nicolo and Antonio Zeno, who gave a vague account of voyages in the northern seas in the end of the 13th century, is no longer to be accepted as history.
At length the long period of barbarism which accompanied and followed the fall of the Roman empire drew to a close in Europe. The Crusades had a favourable influence on the intellectual state of the Western nations. Interesting regions, known only by the scant reports of pilgrims, were made Close of the dark ages. the objects of attention and study; while religious zeal, and the hope of gain, combined with motives of mere curiosity, induced several persons to travel by land into remote regions of the East, far beyond the countries to which the operations of the crusaders extended. Among these was Benjamin of Tudela, who set out from Spain in 1160, travelled by land to Constantinople, and having visited India and some of the eastern islands, returned to Europe by way of Egypt after an absence of thirteen years.
Joannes de Plano Carpini, a Franciscan monk, was the head of one of the missions despatched by Pope Innocent to call the chief and people of the Tatars to a better mind. He reached the headquarters of Batu, on the Volga, in February 1246; and, after some stay, went on to the camp of theAsiatic journeys. great khan near Karakorum in central Asia, and returned safely in the autumn of 1247. A few years afterwards, a Fleming named Rubruquis was sent on a similar mission, and had the merit of being the first traveller of this era who gave a correct account of the Caspian Sea. He ascertained that it had no outlet. At nearly the same time Hayton, king of Armenia, made a journey to Karakorum in 1254, by a route far to the north of that followed by Carpini and Rubruquis. He was treated with honour and hospitality, and returned by way of Samarkand and Tabriz, to his own territory. The curious narrative of King Hayton was translated by Klaproth.
​Missionaries continued to do useful geographical work. Among them were John of Monte Corvino, a Franciscan monk, Andrew of Perugia, John Marignioli and Friar Jordanus, who visited the west coast of India, and above all Friar Odoric of Pordenone. Odoric set out on his travels about 1318, and his journeys embraced parts of India, the Malay Archipelago, China and even Tibet, where he was the first European to enter Lhasa, not yet a forbidden city.
Ibn Batuta, the great Arab traveller, is separated by a wide space of time from his countrymen already mentioned, and he finds his proper place in a chronological notice after the days of Marco Polo, for he did not begin his wanderings until 1325, his career thus coinciding in time with the fabled journeyings of Sir John Mandeville. While Arab learning flourished during the darkest ages of European ignorance, the last of the Arab geographers lived to see the dawn of the great period of the European awakening. Ibn Batuta went by land from Tangier to Cairo, then visited Syria, and performed the pilgrimages to Medina and Mecca. After exploring Persia, and again residing for some time at Mecca, he made a voyage down the Red sea to Yemen, and travelled through that country to Aden. Thence he visited the African coast, touching at Mombasa and Quiloa, and then sailed across to Ormuz and the Persian Gulf. He crossed Arabia from Bahrein to Jidda, traversed the Red sea and the desert to Syene, and descended the Nile to Cairo. After this he revisited Syria and Asia Minor, and crossed the Black sea, the desert from Astrakhan to Bokhara, and the Hindu Kush. He was in the service of Muhammad Tughluk, ruler of Delhi, about eight years, and was sent on an embassy to China, in the course of which the ambassadors sailed down the west coast of India to Calicut, and then visited the Maldive Islands and Ceylon. Ibn Batuta made the voyage through the Malay Archipelago to China, and on his return he proceeded from Malabar to Bagdad and Damascus, ultimately reaching Fez, the capital of his native country, in November 1349. After a journey into Spain he set out once more for Central Africa in 1352, and reached Timbuktu and the Niger, returning to Fez in 1353. His narrative was committed to writing from his dictation.
The European country which had come the most completely under the influence of Arab culture now began to send forth explorers to distant lands, though the impulse came not from the Moors but from Italian merchant navigators in Spanish service. The peaceful reign of Henry III. of Castile isSpanish exploration. famous for the attempts of that prince to extend the diplomatic relations of Spain to the remotest parts of the earth. He sent embassies to all the princes of Christendom and to the Moors. In 1403 the Spanish king sent a knight of Madrid, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, to the distant court of Timur, at Samarkand. He returned in 1406, and wrote a valuable narrative of his travels.
Italians continued to make important journeys in the East during the 15th century. Among them was Nicolo Conti, who passed through Persia, sailed along the coast of Malabar, visited Sumatra, Java and the south of China, returned by the Red sea, and got home to Venice in 1444 after an absence of twenty-five years. He related his adventures to Poggio Bracciolini, secretary to Pope Eugenius IV.; and the narrative contains much interesting information. One of the most remarkable of the Italian travellers was Ludovico di Varthema, who left his native land in 1502. He went to Egypt and Syria, and for the sake of visiting the holy cities became a Mahommedan. He was the first European who gave an account of the interior of Yemen. He afterwards visited and described many places in Persia, India and the Malay Archipelago, returning to Europe in a Portuguese ship after an absence of five years.
In the 15th century the time was approaching when the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope was to widen the scope of geographical enterprise. This great event was preceded by the general utilization in Europe of the polarity of the magnetic needle in the construction of the mariner’s compass.Portuguese exploration—Prince Henry the Navigator. Portugal took the lead along this new path, and foremost among her pioneers stands Prince Henry the Navigator (1394–1460), who was a patron both of exploration and of the study of geographical theory. The great westward projection of the coast of Africa, and the islands to the north-west of that continent, were the principal scene of the work of the mariners sent out at his expense; but his object was to push onward and reach India from the Atlantic. The progress of discovery received a check on his death, but only for a time. In 1462 Pedro de Cintra extended Portuguese exploration along the African coast and discovered Sierra Leone. Fernan Gomez followed in 1469, and opened trade with the Gold Coast; and in 1484 Diogo Cão discovered the mouth of the Congo. The king of Portugal next despatched Bartolomeu Diaz in 1486 to continue discoveries southwards; while, in the following year, he sent Pedro de Covilhão and Affonso de Payva to discover the country of Prester John. Diaz succeeded in rounding the southern point of Africa, which he named Cabo Tormentoso—the Cape of Storms—but King João II., foreseeing the realization of the long-sought passage to India, gave it the stimulating and enduring name of the Cape of Good Hope. Payva died at Cairo; but Covilhão, having heard that a Christian ruler reigned in the mountains of Ethiopia, penetrated into Abyssinia in 1490. He delivered the letter which João II. had addressed to Prester John to the Negus Alexander of Abyssinia, but he was detained by that prince and never allowed to leave the country.
The Portuguese, following the lead of Prince Henry, continued to look for the road to India by the Cape of Good Hope. The same end was sought by Christopher Columbus, following the suggestion of Toscanelli, and under-estimating the diameter of the globe, by sailing due west. The voyages of Columbus Columbus. (1492–1498) resulted in the discovery of the West Indies and North America which barred the way to the Far East. In 1493 the pope, Alexander VI., issued a bull instituting the famous “line of demarcation” running from N. to S. 100 leagues W. of the Azores, to the west of which the Spaniards were authorized to explore and to the east of which the Portuguese received the monopoly of discovery. The direct line of Portuguese exploration resulted in the discovery of the Cape route to India by Vasco da Gama (1498), and in 1500 to the independent discovery of South America by Pedro Alvarez Cabral. The voyages of Columbus and of Vasco da Gama were so important that it is unnecessary to detail their results in this place. See Columbus, Christopher; Gama, Vasco da.
The three voyages of Vasco da Gama (who died on the scene of his labours, at Cochin, in 1524) revolutionized the commerce of the East. Until then the Venetians held the carrying trade of India, which was brought by the Persian Gulf and Red sea into Syria and Egypt, the Venetians receiving theVasco da Gama. products of the East at Alexandria and Beirut and distributing them over Europe. This commerce was a great source of wealth to Venice; but after the discovery of the new passage round the Cape, and the conquests of the Portuguese, the trade of the East passed into other hands.
The discoveries of Columbus awakened a spirit of enterprise in Spain which continued in full force for a century; adventurers flocked eagerly across the Atlantic, and discovery followed discovery in rapid succession. Many of the companions of Columbus continued his work. Vicente Yañez PinzonSpaniards in America. in 1500 reached the mouth of the Amazon. In the same year Alonso de Ojeda, accompanied by Juan de la Cosa, from whose maps we learn much of the discoveries of the 16th century navigators, and by a Florentine named Amerigo Vespucci, touched the coast of South America somewhere near Surinam, following the shore as far as the Gulf of Maracaibo. Vespucci afterwards made three voyages to the Brazilian coast; and in 1504 he wrote an account of his four voyages, which was widely circulated, and became the means of procuring for its author at the hands of the cartographer Waldseemüller in 1507 the disproportionate distinction of giving his name to the whole continent. In 1508 Alonso de Ojeda obtained the government of the coast of South America from Cabo de la Vela to the Gulf of Darien; Ojeda landed at Cartagena in 1510, and sustained a defeat from the natives, in which his lieutenant, Juan de la Cosa, was killed. After another reverse on the east side of the Gulf of Darien Ojeda returned to Hispaniola and died there. The Spaniards in the Gulf of Darien were left by Ojeda under the command of Francisco Pizarro, the future conqueror of Peru. After suffering much from famine and disease, Pizarro resolved to leave, and embarked the survivors in small vessels, but outside the harbour they met a ship which proved to be that of Martin Fernandez Enciso, Ojeda’s partner, coming with provisions and reinforcements. One of the crew of Enciso’s ship, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, the future discoverer of the Pacific Ocean, induced his commander to form a settlement on the other side of the Gulf of Darien. The soldiers became discontented and deposed Enciso, who was a man of learning and an accomplished cosmographer. His work Suma de Geografia, which was printed in 1519, is the first Spanish book which gives an account of America. Vasco Nuñez, the new commander, entered upon a career of conquest in the neighbourhood of Darien, which ended in the discovery of the Pacific Ocean on the 25th of September 1513. Vasco Nuñez was beheaded in 1517 by Pedrarias de Avila, who was sent out to supersede him. This was one of the greatest calamities that could have happened to South America; for the discoverer of the South sea was on the point of sailing with a little fleet into his unknown ocean, and a humane and judicious man would probably have been the conqueror of Peru, instead of the cruel and ignorant Pizarro. In the year 1519 Panama was founded by Pedrarias; and the conquest of Peru by Pizarro followed a few years afterwards. Hernan Cortes overran and conquered Mexico from 1518 to 1521, and the discovery and conquest of Guatemala by Alvarado, the invasion of Florida by De Soto, and of Nueva Granada by Quesada, followed in rapid succession. The first detailed account of the west coast of South America was written by a keenly observant old soldier, Pedro de Cieza de Leon, who was travelling in South America from 1533 to 1550, and published his story at Seville in 1553.
The great desire of the Spanish government at that time was to find a westward route to the Moluccas. For this purpose Juan Diaz de Solis was despatched in October 1515, and in January 1516 he discovered the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. He was, however, killed by the natives, and his Pacific Ocean.ships returned. In the following year the Portuguese Ferdinando Magalhães, familiarly known as Magellan, laid before Charles V., at Valladolid, a scheme for reaching the Spice Islands by sailing westward. He started on the 21st of September 1519, entered the strait which now bears his name in October 1520, worked his way through between Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, and entered on ​the vast Pacific which he crossed without sighting any of its innumerable island groups. This was unquestionably the greatest of the voyages which followed from the impulse of Prince Henry, and it was rendered possible only by the magnificent courage of the commander in spite of rebellion, mutiny and starvation. It was the 6th of March 1521 when he reached the Ladrone Islands. Thence Magellan proceeded to the Philippines, and there his career ended in an unimportant encounter with hostile natives. Eventually a Biscayan named Sebastian del Cano, sailing home by way of the Cape of Good Hope, reached San Lucar in command of the “Victoria” on the 6th of September 1522, with eighteen survivors; this one ship of the squadron which sailed on the quest succeeded in accomplishing the first circumnavigation of the globe. Del Cano was received with great distinction by the emperor, who granted him a globe for his crest, and the motto Primus circumdedisti me.
While the Spaniards were circumnavigating the world and completing their knowledge of the coasts of Central and South America, the Portuguese were actively engaged on similar work as regards Africa and the East Indies.Portuguese in Africa and the East.
With Abyssinia the mission of Covilhão led to further intercourse. In April 1520 Vasco da Gama, as viceroy of the Indies, took a fleet into the Red sea, and landed an embassy consisting of Dom Rodriguez de Lima and Father Francisco Alvarez, a priest whose detailed narrative is the earliest and not the least interesting account we possess of Abyssinia. It was not until 1526 that the embassy was dismissed; and not many years afterwards the negus entreated the help of the Portuguese against Mahommedan invaders, and the viceroy sent an expeditionary force, commanded by his brother Cristoforo da Gama, with 450 musketeers. Da Gama was taken prisoner and killed, but his followers enabled the Christians of Abyssinia to regain their power, and a Jesuit mission remained in the country. The Portuguese also established a close connexion with the kingdom of Congo on the west side of Africa, and obtained much information respecting the interior of the continent. Duarte Lopez, a Portuguese settled in the country, was sent on a mission to Rome by the king of Congo, and Pope Sixtus V. caused him to recount to his chamberlain, Felipe Pigafetta, all he had learned during the nine years he had been in Africa, from 1578 to 1587. This narrative, under the title of Description of the Kingdom of Congo, was published at Rome by Pigafetta in 1591. A map was attached on which several great equatorial lakes are shown, and the empire of Monomwezi or Unyamwezi is laid down. The most valuable work on Africa about this time is, however, that written by the Moor Leo Africanus in the early part of the 16th century. Leo travelled extensively in the north and west of Africa, and was eventually taken by pirates and sold to a master who presented him to Pope Leo X. At the pope’s desire he translated his work on Africa into Italian.
In Further India and the Malay Archipelago the Portuguese acquired predominating influence at sea, establishing factories on the Malabar coast, in the Persian Gulf, at Malacca, and in the Spice Islands, and extending their commercial enterprises from the Red sea to China. Their missionaries were received at the court of Akbar, and Benedict Goes, a native of the Azores, was despatched on a journey overland from Agra to China. He started in 1603, and, after traversing the least-known parts of Central Asia, he reached the confines of China. He appears to have ascended from Kabul to the plateau of the Pamir, and thence onwards by Yarkand, Khotan and Aksu. He died on the journey in March 1607; and thus, as one of the brethren pronounced his epitaph, “seeking Cathay he found heaven.”
The activity and love of adventure, which became a passion for two or three generations in Spain and Portugal, spread to other countries. It was the spirit of the age; and England, Holland and France were fired by it. English enterprise was first aroused by John and Sebastian Cabot, fatherEnglish, Dutch and French. and son, who came from Venice and settled at Bristol in the time of Henry VII. The Cabots received a patent in 1496, empowering them to seek unknown lands; and John Cabot discovered Newfoundland and part of the coast of America. Sebastian afterwards made a voyage to Rio de la Plata in the service of Spain, but he returned to England in 1548 and received a pension from Edward VI. At his suggestion a voyage was undertaken for the discovery of a north-east passage to Cathay, with Sir Hugh Willoughby as captain-general of the fleet and Richard Chancellor as pilot-major. They sailed in May 1553, but Willoughby and all his crew perished on the Lapland coast. Chancellor, however, was more fortunate. He reached the White Sea, performed the journey overland to Moscow, where he was well received, and may be said to have been the founder of the trade between Russia and England. He returned to Archangel and brought his ship back in safety to England. On a second voyage, in 1556, Chancellor was drowned; and three subsequent voyages, led by Stephen Burrough, Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman, in small craft of 50 tons and under, carried on an examination of the straits which lead into the Kara sea.
The French followed closely on the track of John Cabot, and Norman and Breton fishermen frequented the banks of Newfoundland at the beginning of the 16th century. In 1524 Francis I. sent Giovanni da Verazzano of Florence on an expedition of discovery to the coast of North America; and the details of his voyage were embodied in a letter addressed by him to the king of France from Dieppe, in July 1524. In 1534 Jacques Cartier set out to continue the discoveries of Verazzano, and visited Newfoundland and the Gulf of St Lawrence. In the following year he made another voyage, discovered the island of Anticosti, and ascended the St Lawrence to Hochelaga, now Montreal. He returned, after passing two winters in Canada; and on another occasion he also failed to establish a colony. Admiral de Coligny made several unsuccessful endeavours to form a colony in Florida under Jean Ribault of Dieppe, René de Laudonnière and others, but the settlers were furiously assailed by the Spaniards and the attempt was abandoned.
The reign of Elizabeth is famous for the gallant enterprises that were undertaken by sea and land to discover and bring to light the unknown parts of the earth. The great promoter of geographical discovery in the Elizabethan period was Richard Hakluyt (1553–1616), who was active in the formationThe Elizabethan era. of the two companies for colonizing Virginia in 1606; and devoted his life to encouraging and recording similar undertakings. He published much, and left many valuable papers at his death, most of which, together with many other narratives, were published in 1622 in the great work of the Rev. Samuel Purchas, entitled Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes.
It is from these works that our knowledge of the gallant deeds of the English and other explorers of the Elizabethan age is mainly derived. The great and splendidly illustrated collections of voyages and travels of Theodorus de Bry and Hulsius served a similar useful purpose on the continent of Europe. One important object of English maritime adventurers of those days was to discover a route to Cathay by the north-west, a second was to settle Virginia, and a third was to raid the Spanish settlements in the West Indies. Nor was the trade to Muscovy and Turkey neglected; while latterly a resolute and successful attempt was made to establish direct commercial relations with India.
The conception of the north-western route to Cathay now leads the story of exploration, for the first time as far as important and sustained efforts are concerned, towards the Arctic seas. This part of the story is fully told under the heading of Polar Regions, and only the names of Martin Frobisher (1576), John Davis (1585), Henry Hudson (1607) and William Baffin (1616) need be mentioned here in order to preserve the complete conspectus of the history of discovery. The Dutch emulated the British in the Arctic seas during this period, directing their efforts mainly towards the discovery of a north-east passage round the northern end of Novaya Zemlya; and William Barents or Barendsz (1594–1597) is the most famous name in this connexion, his boat voyage along the coast of Novaya Zemlya after losing his ship and wintering in a high latitude, being one of the most remarkable achievements in polar annals.
Many English voyages were also made to Guinea and the West Indies, and twice English vessels followed in the track of Magellan, and circumnavigated the globe. In 1577 Francis Drake, who had previously served with Hawkins in the West Indies, undertook his celebrated voyage round the world. Reaching the Pacific through the Strait of Magellan, Drake proceeded northward along the west coast of America, resolved to attempt the discovery of a northern passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The coast from the southern extremity of the Californian peninsula to Cape Mendocino had been discovered by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and Francisco de Ulloa in 1539. Drake’s discoveries extended from Cape Mendocino to 48° N., in which latitude he gave up his quest, sailed across the Pacific and reached the Philippine Islands, returning home round the Cape of Good Hope in 1580.
Thomas Cavendish, emulous of Drake’s example, fitted out three vessels for an expedition to the South sea in 1586. He took the same route as Drake along the west coast of America. From Cape San Lucas Cavendish steered across the Pacific, seeing no land until he reached the Ladrone Islands. He returned to England in 1588. The third English voyage into the Pacific was not so fortunate. Sir Richard Hawkins (1593) on reaching the bay of Atacames, in 1° N. in 1594, was attacked by a Spanish fleet, and, after a desperate naval engagement, was forced to surrender. Hawkins declared his object to be discovery and the survey of unknown lands, and his voyage, though terminating in disaster, bore good fruit. The Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins in his Voyage into the South Sea, published in 1622, are very valuable. It was long before another British ship entered the Pacific Ocean. Sir John Narborough took two ships through the Strait of Magellan in 1670 and touched on the coast of Chile, but it was not until 1685 that Dampier sailed over the part of the Pacific where Hawkins met his defeat.
The exploring enterprise of the Spanish nation did not wane after the conquest of Peru and Mexico, and the acquisition of the vast empire of the Indies. It was spurred into renewed activity by the audacity of Sir John Hawkins in the West Indies, and by the appearance of Drake, Cavendish and Richard Hawkins in the Pacific.
In the interior of South America the Spanish conquerors had explored the region of the Andes from the isthmus of Panama to Chile. Pedro de Valdivia in 1540 made an expedition into the country of the Araucanian Indians of Chile, and was the first to ​explore the eastern base of the Andes in what is now Argentine Patagonia. In 1541 Francisco de Orellana discovered the whole course of the Amazon from its source in the Andes to the Atlantic. A second voyage on the Amazon was made in 1561 by the mad pirate Lope de Aguirre; but it was not until 1639 that a full account was written of the great river by Father Cristoval de Acuña, who ascended it from its mouth and reached the city of Quito.
The voyage of Drake across the Pacific was preceded by that of Alvaro de Mendaña, who was despatched from Peru in 1567 to discover the great Antarctic continent which was believed to extend far northward into the South sea, the search for which now became one of the leading motives ofSpaniards in the Pacific. exploration. After a voyage of eighty days across the Pacific, Mendaña discovered the Solomon Islands; and the expedition returned in safety to Callao. The appearance of Drake on the Peruvian coast led to an expedition being fitted out at Callao, to go in chase of him, under the command of Pedro Sarmiento. He sailed from Callao in October 1579, and made a careful survey of the Strait of Magellan, with the object of fortifying that entrance to the South sea. The colony which he afterwards took out from Spain was a complete failure, and is only remembered now from the name of “Port Famine,” which Cavendish gave to the site at which he found the starving remnant of Sarmiento’s settlers. In June 1595 Mendaña sailed from the coast of Peru in command of a second expedition to colonize the Solomon Islands. After discovering the Marquesas, he reached the island of Santa Cruz of evil memory, where he and many of the settlers died. His young widow took command of the survivors and brought them safely to Manila. The viceroys of Peru still persevered in their attempts to plant a colony in the hypothetical southern continent. Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, who was pilot under Mendaña and Luis Vaez de Torres, were sent in command of two ships to continue the work of exploration. They sailed from Callao in December 1605, and discovered several islands of the New Hebrides group. They anchored in a bay of a large island which Quiros named “Australia del Espiritu Santo.” From this place Quiros returned to America, but Torres continued the voyage, passed through the strait between Australia and New Guinea which bears his name, and explored and mapped the southern and eastern coasts of New Guinea.
The Portuguese, in the early part of the 17th century (1578–1640), were under the dominion of Spain, and their enterprise was to some extent damped; but their missionaries extended geographical knowledge in Africa. Father Francisco Paez acquired great influence in Abyssinia, and explored its highlands from 1600 to 1622. Fathers Mendez and Lobo traversed the deserts between the coast of the Red sea and the mountains, became acquainted with Lake Tsana, and discovered the sources of the Blue Nile in 1624–1633.
But the attention of the Portuguese was mainly devoted to vain attempts to maintain their monopoly of the trade of India against the powerful rivalry of the English and Dutch. The English enterprises were persevering, continuous and successful. James Lancaster made a voyage to the IndianRivalry in the East. Ocean from 1591 to 1594; and in 1599 the merchants and adventurers of London resolved to form a company, with the object of establishing a trade with the East Indies. On the 31st of December 1599 Queen Elizabeth granted the charter of incorporation to the East India Company, and Sir James Lancaster, one of the directors, was appointed general of their first fleet. He was accompanied by John Davis, the great Arctic navigator, as pilot-major. This voyage was eminently successful. The ships touched at Achin in Sumatra and at Java, returning with full ladings of pepper in 1603. The second voyage was commanded by Sir Henry Middleton; but it was in the third voyage, under Keelinge and Hawkins, that the mainland of India was first reached in 1607. Captain Hawkins landed at Surat and travelled overland to Agra, passing some time at the court of the Great Mogul. In the voyage of Sir Edward Michelborne in 1605, John Davis lost his life in a fight with a Japanese junk. The eighth voyage, led by Captain Saris, extended the operations of the company to Japan; and in 1613 the Japanese government granted privileges to the company; but the British retired in 1623, giving up their factory. The chief result of this early intercourse between Great Britain and Japan was the interesting series of letters written by William Adams from 1611 to 1617. From the tenth voyage of the East India Company, commanded by Captain Best, who left England in 1612, dates the establishment of permanent British factories on the coast of India. It was Captain Best who secured a regular firman for trade from the Great Mogul. From that time a fleet was despatched every year, and the company’s operations greatly increased geographical knowledge of India and the Eastern Archipelago. British visits to Eastern countries, at this time, were not confined to the voyages of the company. Journeys were also made by land, and, among others, the entertaining author of the Crudities, Thomas Coryate, of Odcombe in Somersetshire, wandered on foot from France to India, and died (1617) in the company’s factory at Surat. In 1561 Anthony Jenkinson arrived in Persia with a letter from Queen Elizabeth to the shah. He travelled through Russia to Bokhara, and returned by the Caspian and Volga. In 1579 Christopher Burroughs built a ship at Nizhniy Novgorod and traded across the Caspian to Baku; and in 1598 Sir Anthony and Robert Shirley arrived in Persia, and Robert was afterwards sent by the shah to Europe as his ambassador. He was followed by a Spanish mission under Garcia de Silva, who wrote an interesting account of his travels; and to Sir Dormer Cotton’s mission, in 1628, we are indebted for Sir Thomas Herbert’s charming narrative. In like manner Sir Thomas Roe’s mission to India resulted not only in a large collection of valuable reports and letters of his own, but also in the detailed account of his chaplain Terry. But the most learned and intelligent traveller in the East, during the 17th century, was the German, Engelbrecht Kaempfer, who accompanied an embassy to Persia, in 1684, and was afterwards a surgeon in the service of the Dutch East India Company. He was in the Persian Gulf, India and Java, and resided for more than two years in Japan, of which he wrote a history.
The Dutch nation, as soon as it was emancipated from Spanish tyranny, displayed an amount of enterprise, which, for a long time, was fully equal to that of the British. The Arctic voyages of Barents were quickly followed by the establishment of a Dutch East India Company; and the Dutch, ousting the Portuguese, not only established factories on theDutch exploration, 16th-17th centuries. mainland of India and in Japan, but acquired a preponderating influence throughout the Malay Archipelago. In 1583 Jan Hugen van Linschoten made a voyage to India with a Portuguese fleet, and his full and graphic descriptions of India, Africa, China and the Malay Archipelago must have been of no small use to his countrymen in their distant voyages. The first of the Dutch Indian voyages was performed by ships which sailed in April 1595, and rounded the Cape of Good Hope. A second large Dutch fleet sailed in 1598; and, so eager was the republic to extend her commerce over the world that another fleet, consisting of five ships of Rotterdam, was sent in the same year by way of Magellan’s Strait, under Jacob Mahu as admiral, with William Adams as pilot. Mahu died on the passage out, and was succeeded by Simon de Cordes, who was killed on the coast of Chile. In September 1599 the fleet had entered the Pacific. The ships were then steered direct for Japan, and anchored off Bungo in April 1600. In the same year, 1598, a third expedition was despatched under Oliver van Noort, a native of Utrecht, but the voyage contributed nothing to geography. The Dutch Company in 1614 again resolved to send a fleet to the Moluccas by the westward route, and Joris Spilbergen was appointed to the command as admiral, with a commission from the States-General. He was furnished with four ships of Amsterdam, two of Rotterdam and one from Zeeland. On the 6th of May 1615 Spilbergen entered the Pacific Ocean, and touched at several places on the coast of Chile and Peru, defeating the Spanish fleet in a naval engagement off Chilca. After plundering Payta and making requisitions at Acapulco, the Dutch fleet crossed the Pacific and reached the Moluccas in March 1616.
The Dutch now resolved to discover a passage into the Pacific to the south of Tierra del Fuego, the insular nature of which had been ascertained by Sir Francis Drake. The vessels fitted out for this purpose were the “Eendracht,” of 360 tons, commanded by Jacob Lemaire, and the “Hoorn,” of 110 tons, under Willem Schouten. They sailed from the Texel on the 14th of June 1615, and by the 20th of January 1616 they were south of the entrance of Magellan’s Strait. Passing through the strait of Lemaire they came to the southern extremity of Tierra del Fuego, which was named Cape Horn, in honour of the town of Hoorn in West Friesland, of which Schouten was a native. They passed the cape on the 31st of January, encountering the usual westerly winds. The great merit of this discovery of a second passage into the South sea lies in the fact that it was not accidental or unforeseen, but was due to the sagacity of those who designed the voyage. On the 1st of March the Dutch fleet sighted the island of Juan Fernandez; and, having crossed the Pacific, the explorers sailed along the north coast of New Guinea and arrived at the Moluccas on the 17th of September 1616.
There were several early indications of the existence of the great Australian continent, and the Dutch endeavoured to obtain further knowledge concerning the country and its extent; but only its northern and western coasts had been visited before the time of Governor van Diemen. Dirk Hartog had been on the west coast in latitude 26° 30′ S. in 1616. Pelsert struck on a reef called “Houtman’s Abrolhos” on the 4th of June 1629. In 1697 the Dutch captain Vlamingh landed on the west coast of Australia, then called New Holland, in 31° 43′ S., and named the Swan river from the black swans he discovered there. In 1642 the governor and council of Batavia fitted out two ships to prosecute the discovery of the south land, then believed to be part of a vast Antarctic continent, and entrusted the command to Captain Abel Jansen Tasman. This voyage proved to be the most important to geography that had been undertaken since the first circumnavigation of the globe. Tasman sailed from Batavia in 1642, and on the 24th of November sighted high land in 42° 30′ S., which was named van Diemen’s Land, and after landing there proceeded to the discovery of the western coast of New Zealand; at first called Staten Land, and supposed to be connected with the Antarctic continent from which this voyage proved New Holland to be separated. He then reached Tongatabu, one of the Friendly Islands of Cook; and returned by the north coast of New Guinea to Batavia. In 1644 Tasman made a second voyage to effect a fuller discovery of New Guinea.
​The French directed their enterprise more in the direction of North America than of the Indies. One of their most distinguished explorers was Samuel Champlain, a captain in the navy, who, after a remarkable journey through Mexico and the West Indies from 1599 to 1602, established his historicFrench in North America. connexion with Canada, to the geographical knowledge of which he made a very large addition.
The principles and methods of surveying and position finding had by this time become well advanced, and the most remarkable example of the early application of these improvements is to be found in the survey of China by Jesuit missionaries. They first prepared a map of the country round Peking,Missionaries in the East. which was submitted to the emperor Kang-hi, and, being satisfied with the accuracy of the European method of surveying, he resolved to have a survey made of the whole empire on the same principles. This great work was begun in July 1708, and the completed maps were presented to the emperor in 1718. The records preserved in each city were examined, topographical information was diligently collected, and the Jesuit fathers checked their triangulation by meridian altitudes of the sun and pole star and by a system of remeasurements. The result was a more accurate map of China than existed, at that time, of any country in Europe. Kang-hi next ordered a similar map to be made of Tibet, the survey being executed by two lamas who were carefully trained as surveyors by the Jesuits at Peking. From these surveys were constructed the well-known maps which were forwarded to Duhalde, and which D’Anville utilized for his atlas.
Several European missionaries had previously found their way from India to Tibet. Antonio Andrada, in 1624, was the first European to enter Tibet since the visit of Friar Odoric in 1325. The next journey was that of Fathers Grueber and Dorville about 1660, who succeeded in passing from The 18th century. Asia. China, through Tibet, into India. In 1715 Fathers Desideri and Freyre made their way from Agra, across the Himalayas, to Lhasa, and the Capuchin Friar Orazio della Penna resided in that city from 1735 until 1747. But the most remarkable journey in this direction was performed by a Dutch traveller named Samuel van de Putte. He left Holland in 1718, went by land through Persia to India, and eventually made his way to Lhasa, where he resided for a long time. He went thence to China, returned to Lhasa, and was in India in time to be an eye-witness of the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah in 1737. In 1743 he left India and died at Batavia on the 27th of September 1745. The premature death of this illustrious traveller is the more to be lamented because his vast knowledge died with him. Two English missions sent by Warren Hastings to Tibet, one led by George Bogle in 1774, and the other by Captain Turner in 1783, complete Tibetan exploration in the 18th century.
From Persia much new information was supplied by Jean Chardin, Jean Tavernier, Charles Hamilton, Jean de Thévenot and Father Jude Krusinski, and by English traders on the Caspian. In 1738 John Elton traded between Astrakhan and the Persian port of Enzelî on the Caspian, and undertook to build a fleet for Nadir Shah. Another English merchant, named Jonas Hanway, arrived at Astrabad from Russia, and travelled to the camp of Nadir at Kazvin. One lasting and valuable result of Hanway’s wanderings was a charming book of travels. In 1700 Guillaume Delisle published his map of the continents of the Old World; and his successor D’Anville produced his map of India in 1752. D’Anville’s map contained all that was then known, but ten years afterwards Major Rennell began his surveying labours, which extended over the period from 1763 to 1782. His survey covered an area 900 m. long by 300 wide, from the eastern confines of Bengal to Agra, and from the Himalayas to Calpi. Rennell was indefatigable in collecting geographical information; his Bengal atlas appeared in 1781, his famous map of India in 1788 and the memoir in 1792. Surveys were also made along the Indian coasts.
Arabia received very careful attention, in the 18th century, from the Danish scientific mission, which included Carsten Niebuhr among its members. Niebuhr landed at Loheia, on the coast of Yemen, in December 1762, and went by land to Sana. All the other members of the mission died, but he proceeded from Mokha to Bombay. He then made a journey through Persia and Syria to Constantinople, returning to Copenhagen in 1767. His valuable work, the Description of Arabia, was published in 1772, and was followed in 1774–1778 by two volumes of travels in Asia. The great traveller survived until 1815, when he died at the age of eighty-two.
James Bruce of Kinnaird, the contemporary of Niebuhr, was equally devoted to Eastern travel; and his principal geographical work was the tracing of the Blue Nile from its source to its junction with the White Nile. Before the death of Bruce an African Association was formed, in 1788, for collectingAfrica. information respecting the interior of that continent, with Major Rennell and Sir Joseph Banks as leading members. The association first employed John Ledyard (who had previously made an extraordinary journey into Siberia) to cross Africa from east to west on the parallel of the Niger, and William Lucas to cross the Sahara to Fezzan. Lucas went from Tripoli to Mesurata, obtained some information respecting Fezzan and returned in 1789. One of the chief problems the association wished to solve was that of the existence and course of the river Niger, which was believed by some authorities to be identical with the Congo. Mungo Park, then an assistant surgeon of an Indiaman, volunteered his services, which were accepted by the association, and in 1795 he succeeded in reaching the town of Segu on the Niger, but was prevented from continuing his journey to Timbuktu. Five years later he accepted an offer from the government to command an expedition into the interior of Africa, the plan being to cross from the Gambia to the Niger and descend the latter river to the sea. After losing most of his companions he himself and the rest perished in a rapid on the Niger at Busa, having been attacked from the shore by order of a chief who thought he had not received suitable presents. His work, however, had established the fact that the Niger was not identical with the Congo.
While the British were at work in the direction of the Niger, the Portuguese were not unmindful of their old exploring fame. In 1798 Dr F. J. M. de Lacerda, an accomplished astronomer, was appointed to command a scientific expedition of discovery to the north of the Zambesi. He started in July, crossed the Muchenja Mountains, and reached the capital of the Cazembe, where he died of fever. Lacerda left a valuable record of his adventurous journey; but with Mungo Park and Lacerda the history of African exploration in the 18th century closes.
In South America scientific exploration was active during this period. The great geographical event of the century, as regards that continent, was the measurement of an arc of the meridian. The undertaking was proposed by the French Academy as part of an investigation with the objectSouth America. of ascertaining the length of the degree near the equator and near the pole respectively so as to determine the figure of the earth. A commission left Paris in 1735, consisting of Charles Marie de la Condamine, Pierre Bouguer, Louis Godin and Joseph de Jussieu the naturalist. Spain appointed two accomplished naval officers, the brothers Ulloa, as coadjutors. The operations were carried on during eight years on a plain to the south of Quito; and, in addition to his memoir on this memorable measurement, La Condamine collected much valuable geographical information during a voyage down the Amazon. The arc measured was 3° 7′ 3″ in length; and the work consisted of two measured bases connected by a series of triangles, one north and the other south of the equator, on the meridian of Quito. Contemporaneously, in 1738, Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, Alexis Claude Clairaut, Charles Etienne Louis Camus, Pierre Charles Lemonnier and the Swedish physicist Celsius measured an arc of the meridian in Lapland.
The British and French governments despatched several expeditions of discovery into the Pacific and round the world during the 18th century. They were preceded by the wonderful and romantic voyages of the buccaneers. The narratives of such men as Woodes Rogers, Edward Davis, GeorgeThe Pacific Ocean. Shelvocke, Clipperton and William Dampier, can never fail to interest, while they are not without geographical value. The works of Dampier are especially valuable, and the narratives of William Funnell and Lionel Wafer furnished the best accounts then extant of the Isthmus of Darien. Dampier’s literary ability eventually secured for him a commission in the king’s service; and he was sent on a voyage of discovery, during which he explored part of the coasts of Australia and New Guinea, and discovered the strait which bears his name between New Guinea and New Britain, returning in 1701. In 1721 Jacob Roggewein was despatched on a voyage of some importance across the Pacific by the Dutch West India Company, during which he discovered Easter Island on the 6th of April 1722.
The voyage of Lord Anson to the Pacific in 1740–1744 was of a predatory character, and he lost more than half his men from scurvy; while it is not pleasant to reflect that at the very time when the French and Spaniards were measuring an arc of the meridian at Quito, the British under Anson were pillaging along the coast of the Pacific and burning the town of Payta. But a romantic interest attaches to the wreck of the “Wager,” one of Anson’s fleet, on a desert island near Chiloe, for it bore fruit in the charming narrative of Captain John Byron, which will endure for all time. In 1764 Byron himself was sent on a voyage of discovery round the world, which led immediately after his return to the despatch of another to complete his work, under the command of Captain Samuel Wallis.
The expedition, consisting of the “Dolphin” commanded by Wallis, and the “Swallow” under Captain Philip Carteret, sailed in September 1766, but the ships were separated on entering the Pacific from the Strait of Magellan. Wallis discovered Tahiti on the 19th of June 1767, and he gave a detailed account of that island. He returned to England in May 1768. Carteret discovered the Charlotte and Gloucester Islands, and Pitcairn Island on the 2nd of July 1767; revisited the Santa Cruz group, which was discovered by Mendaña and Quiros; and discovered the strait separating New Britain from New Ireland. He reached Spithead again in February 1769. Wallis and Carteret were followed very closely by the French expedition of Bougainville, which sailed from Nantes in November 1766. Bougainville had first to perform the unpleasant task of delivering up the Falkland Islands, where he had encouraged the formation of a French settlement, to the Spaniards. He then entered the Pacific, and reached Tahiti in April 1768. Passing through the New ​Hebrides group he touched at Batavia, and arrived at St Malo after an absence of two years and four months.
The three voyages of Captain James Cook form an era in the history of geographical discovery. In 1767 he sailed for Tahiti, with the object of observing the transit of Venus, accompanied by two naturalists, Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Solander, a pupil of Linnaeus, as well as by two astronomers. TheCaptain Cook. transit was observed on the 3rd of June 1769. After exploring Tahiti and the Society group, Cook spent six months surveying New Zealand, which he discovered to be an island, and the coast of New South Wales from latitude 38° S. to the northern extremity. The belief in a vast Antarctic continent stretching far into the temperate zone had never been abandoned, and was vehemently asserted by Charles Dalrymple, a disappointed candidate nominated by the Royal Society for the command of the Transit expedition of 1769. In 1772 the French explorer Yves Kerguelen de Tremarec had discovered the land that bears his name in the South Indian Ocean without recognizing it to be an island, and naturally believed it to be part of the southern continent.
Cook’s second voyage was mainly intended to settle the question of the existence of such a continent once for all, and to define the limits of any land that might exist in navigable seas towards the Antarctic circle. James Cook at his first attempt reached a south latitude of 57° 15′. On a second cruise from the Society Islands, in 1773, he, first of all men, crossed the Antarctic circle, and was stopped by ice in 71° 10′ S. During the second voyage Cook visited Easter Island, discovered several islands of the New Hebrides and New Caledonia; and on his way home by Cape Horn, in March 1774, he discovered the Sandwich Island group and described South Georgia. He proved conclusively that any southern continent that might exist lay under the polar ice. The third voyage was intended to attempt the passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic by the north-east. The “Resolution” and “Discovery” sailed in 1776, and Cook again took the route by the Cape of Good Hope. On reaching the North American coast, he proceeded northward, fixed the position of the western extremity of America and surveyed Bering Strait. He was stopped by the ice in 70° 41′ N., and named the farthest visible point on the American shore Icy Cape. He then visited the Asiatic shore and discovered Cape North. Returning to Hawaii, Cook was murdered by the natives. On the 14th of February 1779, his second, Captain Edward Clerke, took command, and proceeding to Petropavlovsk in the following summer, he again examined the edge of the ice, but only got as far as 70° 33′ N. The ships returned to England in October 1780.
In 1785 the French government carefully fitted out an expedition of discovery at Brest, which was placed under the command of François La Pérouse, an accomplished and experienced officer. After touching at Concepcion in Chile and at Easter Island, La Pérouse proceeded to Hawaii and thence to the coast of California, of which he has given a very interesting account. He then crossed the Pacific to Macao, and in July 1787 he proceeded to explore the Gulf of Tartary and the shores of Sakhalin, remaining some time at Castries Bay, so named after the French minister of marine. Thence he went to the Kurile Islands and Kamchatka, and sailed from the far north down the meridian to the Navigator and Friendly Islands. He was in Botany Bay in January 1788; and sailing thence, the explorer, his ship and crew were never seen again. Their fate was long uncertain. In September 1791 Captain Antoine d’Entrecasteaux sailed from Brest with two vessels to seek for tidings. He visited the New Hebrides, Santa Cruz, New Caledonia and Solomon Islands, and made careful though rough surveys of the Louisiade Archipelago, islands north of New Britain and part of New Guinea. D’Entrecasteaux died on board his ship on the 20th of July 1793, without ascertaining the fate of La Pérouse. Captain Peter Dillon at length ascertained, in 1828, that the ships of La Pérouse had been wrecked on the island of Vanikoro during a hurricane.
The work of Captain Cook bore fruit in many ways. His master, Captain William Bligh, was sent in the “Bounty” to convey breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies. He reached Tahiti in October 1788, and in April 1789 a mutiny broke out, and he, with several officers and men, was thrust into an open boat in mid-ocean. During the remarkable voyage he then made to Timor, Bligh passed amongst the northern islands of the New Hebrides, which he named the Banks Group, and made several running surveys. He reached England in March 1790. The “Pandora,” under Captain Edwards, was sent out in search of the “Bounty,” and discovered the islands of Cherry and Mitre, east of the Santa Cruz group, but she was eventually lost on a reef in Torres Strait. In 1796–1797 Captain Wilson, in the missionary ship “Duff,” discovered the Gambier and other islands, and rediscovered the islands known to and seen by Quiros, but since called the Duff Group. Another result of Captain Cook’s work was the colonization of Australia. On the 18th of January 1788 Admiral Phillip and Captain Hunter arrived in Botany Bay in the “Supply” and “Sirius,” followed by six transports, and established a colony at Port Jackson. Surveys were then undertaken in several directions. In 1795 and 1796 Matthew Flinders and George Bass were engaged on exploring work in a small boat called the “Tom Thumb.” In 1797 Bass, who had been a surgeon, made an expedition southwards, continued the work of Cook from Ram Head, and explored the strait which bears his name, and in 1798 he and Flinders were surveying on the east coast of Van Diemen’s land.
Yet another outcome of Captain Cook’s work was the voyage of George Vancouver, who had served as a midshipman in Cook’s second and third voyages. The Spaniards under Quadra had begun a survey of north-western America and occupied Nootka Sound, which their government eventually agreed to surrender. Captain Vancouver was sent out to receive the cession, and to survey the coast from Cape Mendocino northwards. He commanded the old “Discovery,” and was at work during the seasons of 1792, 1793 and 1794, wintering at Hawaii. Returning home in 1795, he completed his narrative and a valuable series of charts.
The 18th century saw the Arctic coast of North America reached at two points, as well as the first scientific attempt to reach the North Pole. The Hudson Bay Company had been incorporated in 1670, and its servants soon extended their operations over a wide area to the north and west of Arctic regions. Canada. In 1741 Captain Christopher Middleton was ordered to solve the question of a passage from Hudson Bay to the westward. Leaving Fort Churchill in July 1742, he discovered the Wager river and Repulse Bay. He was followed by Captain W. Moor in 1746, and Captain Coats in 1751, who examined the Wager Inlet up to the end. In November 1769 Samuel Hearne was sent by the Hudson Bay Company to discover the sea on the north side of America, but was obliged to return. In February 1770 he set out again from Fort Prince of Wales; but, after great hardships, he was again forced to return to the fort. He started once more in December 1771, and at length reached the Coppermine river, which he surveyed to its mouth, but his observations are unreliable. With the same object Alexander Mackenzie, with a party of Canadians, set out from Fort Chippewyan on the 3rd of June 1789, and descending the great river which now bears the explorer’s name reached the Arctic sea.
In February 1773 the Royal Society submitted a proposal to the king for an expedition towards the North Pole. The expedition was fitted out under Captains Constantine Phipps and Skeffington Lutwidge, and the highest latitude reached was 80° 48′ N., but no opening was discovered in the heavy Polar pack. The most important Arctic work in the 18th century was performed by the Russians, for they succeeded in delineating the whole of the northern coast of Siberia. Some of this work was possibly done at a still earlier date. The Cossack Simon Dezhneff is thought to have made a voyage, in the summer of 1648, from the river Kolyma, through Bering Strait (which was rediscovered by Vitus Bering in 1728) to Anadyr. Between 1738 and 1750 Manin and Sterlegoff made their way in small sloops from the mouth of the Yenesei as far north as 75° 15′ N. The land from Taimyr to Cape Chelyuskin, the most northern extremity of Siberia, was mapped in many years of patient exploration by Chelyuskin, who reached the extreme point (77° 34′ N.) in May 1742. To the east of Cape Chelyuskin the Russians encountered greater difficulties. They built small vessels at Yakutsk on the Lena, 900 m. from its mouth, whence the first expedition was despatched under Lieut. Prontschichev in 1735. He sailed from the mouth of the Lena to the mouth of the Olonek, where he wintered, and on the 1st of September 1736 he got as far as 77° 29′ N., within 5 m. of Cape Chelyuskin. Both he and his young wife died of scurvy, and the vessel returned. A second expedition, under Lieut. Laptyev, started from the Lena in 1739, but encountered masses of drift ice in Chatanga bay, and with this ended the voyages to the westward of the Lena. Several attempts were also made to navigate the sea from the Lena to the Kolyma. In 1736 Lieut. Laptyev sailed, but was stopped by the drift ice in August, and in 1739, during another trial, he reached the mouth of the Indigirka, where he wintered. In the season of 1740 he continued his voyage to beyond the Kolyma, wintering at Nizhni Kolymsk. In September 1740 Vitus Bering sailed from Okhotsk on a second Arctic voyage with George William Steller on board as naturalist. In June 1741 he named the magnificent peak on the coast of North America Mount St Elias and explored the Aleutian Islands. In November the ship was wrecked on Bering Island; and the gallant Dane, worn out with scurvy, died there on the 8th of December 1741. In March 1770 a merchant named Liakhov saw a large herd of reindeer coming from the north to the Siberian coast, which induced him to start in a sledge in the direction whence they came. Thus he reached the New Siberian or Liakhov Islands, and for years afterwards the seekers for fossil ivory resorted to them. The Russian Captain Vassili Chitschakov in 1765 and 1766 made two persevering attempts to penetrate the ice north of Spitsbergen, and reached 80° 30′ N., while Russian parties twice wintered at Bell Sound.
In reviewing the progress of geographical discovery thus far, it has been possible to keep fairly closely to a chronological order. But in the 19th century and after exploring work was so generally and steadily maintained in all directions, and was in so many cases narrowed down from long journeys Geographical societies.to detailed surveys within relatively small areas, that it becomes desirable to cover the whole period at one view for certain great divisions of the world. (See Africa; Asia; Australia; Polar Regions; &c.) Here, however, may be noticed the development of geographical societies devoted to the encouragement of exploration and research. The first of the existing geographical societies was ​that of Paris, founded in 1825 under the title of La Société de Géographie. The Berlin Geographical Society (Gesellschaft für Erdkunde) is second in order of seniority, having been founded in 1827. The Royal Geographical Society, which was founded in London in 1830, comes third on the list; but it may be viewed as a direct result of the earlier African Association founded in 1788. Sir John Barrow, Sir John Cam Hobhouse (Lord Broughton), Sir Roderick Murchison, Mr Robert Brown and Mr Bartle Frere formed the foundation committee of the Royal Geographical Society, and the first president was Lord Goderich. The action of the society in supplying practical instruction to intending travellers, in astronomy, surveying and the various branches of science useful to collectors, has had much to do with advancement of discovery. Since the war of 1870 many geographical societies have been established on the continent of Europe. At the close of the 19th century there were upwards of 100 such societies in the world, with more than 50,000 members, and over 150 journals were devoted entirely to geographical subjects. The great development of photography has been a notable aid to explorers, not only by placing at their disposal a faithful and ready means of recording the features of a country and the types of inhabitants, but by supplying a method of quick and accurate topographical surveying.
The Principles of Geography
As regards the scope of geography, the order of the various departments and their inter-relation, there is little difference of opinion, and the principles of geography are now generally accepted by modern geographers. The order in which the various subjects are treated in the following sketch is the natural succession from fundamental to dependent facts, which corresponds also to the evolution of the diversities of the earth’s crust and of its inhabitants.
The fundamental geographical conceptions are mathematical, the relations of space and form. The figure and dimensions of the earth are the first of these. They are ascertained by a combination of actual measurement of the highest precision on the surface and{ angular observations of theMathematical geography. positions of the heavenly bodies. The science of geodesy is part of mathematical geography, of which the arts of surveying and cartography are applications. The motions of the earth as a planet must be taken into account, as they render possible the determination of position and direction by observations of the heavenly bodies. The diurnal rotation of the earth furnishes two fixed points or poles, the axis joining which is fixed or nearly so in its direction in space. The rotation of the earth thus fixes the directions of north and south and defines those of east and west. The angle which the earth’s axis makes with the plane in which the planet revolves round the sun determines the varying seasonal distribution of solar radiation over the surface and the mathematical zones of climate. Another important consequence of rotation is the deviation produced in moving bodies relatively to the surface. In the form known as Ferrell’s Law this runs: “If a body moves in any direction on the earth’s surface, there is a deflecting force which arises from the earth’s rotation which tends to deflect it to the right in the northern hemisphere but to the left in the southern hemisphere.” The deviation is of importance in the movement of air, of ocean currents, and to some extent of rivers.
In popular usage the words “physical geography” have come to mean geography viewed from a particular standpoint rather than any special department of the subject. The popular meaning is better conveyed by the word physiography, a term which appears to have beenPhysical geography. introduced by Linnaeus, and was reinvented as a substitute for the cosmography of the middle ages by Professor Huxley. Although the term has since been limited by some writers to one particular part of the subject, it seems best to maintain the original and literal meaning. In the stricter sense, physical geography is that part of geography which involves the processes of contemporary change in the crust and the circulation of the fluid envelopes. It thus draws upon physics for the explanation of the phenomena with the space-relations of which it is specially concerned. Physical geography naturally falls into three divisions, dealing respectively with the surface of the lithosphere—geomorphology; the hydrosphere—oceanography; and the atmosphere—climatology. All these rest upon the facts of mathematical geography, and the three are so closely inter-related that they cannot be rigidly separated in any discussion.
Geomorphology is the part of geography which deals with terrestrial relief, including the submarine as well as the subaërial portions of the crust. The history of the origin of the various forms belongs to geology, and can be completely studied only by geological methods. But the relief of the crustGeomorph- ology. is not a finished piece of sculpture; the forms are for the most part transitional, owing their characteristic outlines to the process by which they are produced; therefore the geographer must, for strictly geographical purposes, take some account of the processes which are now in action modifying the forms of the crust. Opinion still differs as to the extent to which the geographer’s work should overlap that of the geologist.
The primary distinction of the forms of the crust is that between elevations and depressions. Granting that the geoid or mean surface of the ocean is a uniform spheroid, the distribution of land and water approximately indicates a division of the surface of the globe into two areas, one of elevation and one of depression. The increasing number of measurements of the height of land in all continents and islands, and the very detailed levellings in those countries which have been thoroughly surveyed, enable the average elevation of the land above sea-level to be fairly estimated, although many vast gaps in accurate knowledge remain, and the estimate is not an exact one. The only part of the sea-bed the configuration of which is at all well known is the zone bordering the coasts where the depth is less than about 100 fathoms or 200 metres, i.e. those parts which sailors speak of as “in soundings.” Actual or projected routes for telegraph cables across the deep sea have also been sounded with extreme accuracy in many cases; but beyond these lines of sounding the vast spaces of the ocean remain unplumbed save for the rare researches of scientific expeditions, such as those of the “Challenger,” the “Valdivia,” the “Albatross” and the “Scotia.” Thus the best approximation to the average depth of the ocean is little more than an expert guess; yet a fair approximation is probable for the features of sub-oceanic relief are so much more uniform than those of the land that a smaller number of fixed points is required to determine them.
The chief element of uncertainty as to the largest features of the relief of the earth’s crust is due to the unexplored area in the Arctic region and the larger regions of the Antarctic, of which we know nothing. We know that the earth’s surface if unveiled of water would exhibitCrustal relief. a great region of elevation arranged with a certain rough radiate symmetry round the north pole, and extending southwards in three unequal arms which taper to points in the south. A depression surrounds the little-known south polar region in a continuous ring and extends northwards in three vast hollows lying between the arms of the elevated area. So far only is it possible to speak with certainty, but it is permissible to take a few steps into the twilight of dawning knowledge and indicate the chief subdivisions which are likely to be established in the great crust-hollow and the great crust-heap. The boundary between these should obviously be the mean surface of the sphere.
Sir John Murray deduced the mean height of the land of the globe as about 2250 ft. above sea-level, and the mean depth of the oceans as 2080 fathoms or 12,480 ft. below sea-level. Calculating the area of the land at 55,000,000 sq. m. (or 28.6% of the surface), and that of the oceans as 137,200,000 sq. m. (or 71.4% of the surface), he found that the volume of the land above sea-level was 23,450,000 cub. m., the volume of water below sea-level 323,800,000, and the total volume of the water equal to about 1/666th of the volume of the whole globe. From these data, as revised by A. Supan, H. R. Mill calculated the position of mean sphere-level at about 10,000 ft. or 1700 fathoms below sea-level. He showed that an imaginary spheroidal shell, concentric with the earth and cutting the slope between the elevated and depressed areas at the contour-line of 1700 fathoms, would not only leave above it a volume of the crust equal to the volume of the hollow left below it, but would also divide the surface of the earth so that the area of the elevated region was equal to that of the depressed region.
A similar observation was made almost simultaneously by Romieux, who further speculated on the equilibrium between the weight of the elevated land mass and that of the total waters of the ocean, and deduced some interesting relations between them. Murray, as the result of his study,Areas of the crust accord-ing to Murray. divided the earth’s surface into three zones—the continental area containing all dry land, the transitional area including the submarine slopes down to 1000 fathoms, and the abysmal area consisting of the floor of the ocean beyond that depth; and Mill proposed to take the line of mean-sphere level, instead of the empirical depth of 1000 fathoms, as the boundary between the transitional and abysmal areas.
An elaborate criticism of all the existing data regarding the volume relations of the vertical relief of the globe was made in 1894 by Professor Hermann Wagner, whose recalculations of volumes ​and mean heights—the best results which have yet been obtained—led to the following conclusions.
The area of the dry land was taken as 28.3% of the surface of the globe, and that of the oceans as 71.7%. The mean height deduced for the land was 2300 ft. above sea-level, the mean depth of the sea 11,500 ft. below, while the position of mean-sphere level comes out as 7500 ft. (1250 fathoms) belowAreas of the crust accord-ing to Wagner. sea-level. From this it would appear that 43% of the earth’s surface was above and 57% below the mean level. It must be noted, however, that since 1895 the soundings of Nansen in the north polar area, of the “Valdivia,” “Belgica,” “Gauss” and “Scotia” in the Southern Ocean, and of various surveying ships in the North and South Pacific, have proved that the mean depth of the ocean is considerably greater than had been supposed, and mean-sphere level must therefore lie deeper than the calculations of 1895 show; possibly not far from the position deduced from the freer estimate of 1888. The whole of the available data were utilized by the prince of Monaco in 1905 in the preparation of a complete bathymetrical map of the oceans on a uniform scale, which must long remain the standard work for reference on ocean depths.
By the device of a hypsographic curve co-ordinating the vertical relief and the areas of the earth’s surface occupied by each zone of elevation, according to the system introduced by Supan, Wagner showed his results graphically.
This curve with the values reduced from metres to feet is reproduced below.
Wagner subdivides the earth’s surface, according to elevation, into the following five regions:
Wagner’s Divisions of the Earth’s Crust:
| Name. | Per cent of Surface. | From | To |
| Depressed area | 3 | Deepest. | −16,400 feet. |
| Oceanic plateau | 54 | −16,400 feet. | − 7,400 feet. |
| Continental slope | 9 | − 7,400 feet. | −660 feet. |
| Continental plateau | 28 | −660 feet. | + 3,000 feet. |
| Culminating area | 6 | + 3,300 feet. | Highest. |
The continental plateau might for purposes of detailed study be divided into the continental shelf from −660 ft. to sea-level, and lowlands from sea-level to +660 ft. (corresponding to the mean level of the whole globe). Uplands reaching from 660 ft. to 2300 (the approximate mean level of the land), and highlands, from 2300 upwards, might also be distinguished.
A striking fact in the configuration of the crust is that each continent, or elevated mass of the crust, is diametrically opposite to an ocean basin or great depression; the only partial exception being in the case of southern South America, which is antipodal to eastern Asia. Professor C. Lapworth has Arrangement of world-ridges and hollows.generalized the grand features of crustal relief in a scheme of attractive simplicity. He sees throughout all the chaos of irregular crust-forms the recurrence of a certain harmony, a succession of folds or waves which build up all the minor features. One great series of crust waves from east to west is crossed by a second great series of crust waves from north to south, giving rise by their interference to six great elevated masses (the continents), arranged in three groups, each consisting of a northern and a southern member separated by a minor depression. These elevated masses are divided from one another by similar great depressions.
He says: “The surface of each of our great continental masses of land resembles that of a long and broad arch-like form, of which we see the simplest type in the New World. The surface of the North American arch is sagged downwards in the middle into a central depression whichLapworth’s fold-theory. lies between two long marginal plateaus, and these plateaus are finally crowned by the wrinkled crests which form its two modern mountain systems. The surface of each of our ocean floors exactly resembles that of a continent turned upside down. Taking the Atlantic as our simplest type, we may say that the surface of an ocean basin resembles that of a mighty trough or syncline, buckled up more or less centrally in a medial ridge, which is bounded by two long and deep marginal hollows, in the cores of which still deeper grooves sink to the profoundest depths. This complementary relationship descends even to the minor features of the two. Where the great continental sag sinks below the ocean level, we have our gulfs and our Mediterraneans, seen in our type continent, as the Mexican Gulf and Hudson Bay. Where the central oceanic buckle attains the water-line we have our oceanic islands, seen in our type ocean, as St Helena and the Azores. Although the apparent crust-waves are neither equal in size nor symmetrical in form, this complementary relationship between them is always discernible. The broad Pacific depression seems to answer to the broad elevation of the Old World—the narrow trough of the Atlantic to the narrow continent of America.”
The most thorough discussion of the great features of terrestrial relief in the light of their origin is that by Professor E. Suess, who points out that the plan of the earth is the result of two movements of the crust—one, subsidence over wide areas, giving rise to oceanic depressions and leavingSuess’s theory. the continents protuberant; the other, folding along comparatively narrow belts, giving rise to mountain ranges. This theory of crust blocks dropped by subsidence is opposed to Lapworth’s theory of vast crust-folds, but geology is the science which has to decide between them.
Geomorphology is concerned, however, in the suggestions which have been made as to the cause of the distribution of heap and hollow in the larger features of the crust. Élie de Beaumont, in his speculations on the relation between the direction of mountain ranges and their geological age and character, was feeling towards a comprehensive theory of the forms of crustal relief; but his ideas were too geometrical, and his theory that the earth is a spheroid built up on a rhombic dodecahedron, the pentagonal faces of which determined the direction of mountain ranges, could not be proved. The “tetrahedral theory” brought forward by Lowthian Green, that the form of the earth is a spheroid based on a regular tetrahedron, is more serviceable, because it accounts for three very interesting facts of the terrestrial plan—(1) the antipodal position of continents and ocean basins; (2) the triangular outline of the continents; and (3) the excess of sea in the southern hemisphere. Recent investigations have recalled attention to the work of Lowthian Green, but the question is still in the controversial stage. The study of tidal strain in the earth’s crust by Sir George Darwin has led that physicist to indicate the possibility of the triangular form and southerly direction of the continents being a result of the differential or tidal attraction of the sun and moon. More recently Professor A. E. H. Love has shown that the great features of the relief of the lithosphere may be expressed by spherical harmonics of the first, second and third degrees, and their formation related to gravitational action in a sphere of unequal density.
In any case it is fully recognized that the plan of the earth is so clear as to leave no doubt as to its being due to some general cause which should be capable of detection.
If the level of the sea were to become coincident with the mean level of the lithosphere, there would result one tri-radiate land-mass of nearly uniform outline and one continuous sheet of water ​ broken by few islands. The actual position of sea-level lies so near the summit of the crust-heap that the varied relief of the upperThe continents. portion leads to the formation of a complicated coast-line and a great number of detached portions of land. The hydrosphere is, in fact, continuous, and the land is all in insular masses: the largest is the Old World of Europe, Asia and Africa; the next in size, America; the third, possibly, Antarctica; the fourth, Australia; the fifth, Greenland. After this there is a considerable gap before New Guinea, Borneo, Madagascar, Sumatra and the vast multitude of smaller islands descending in size by regular gradations to mere rocks. The contrast between island and mainland was natural enough in the days before the discovery of Australia, and the mainland of the Old World was traditionally divided into three continents. These “continents,” “parts of the earth,” or “quarters of the globe,” proved to be convenient divisions; America was added as a fourth, and subsequently divided into two, while Australia on its discovery was classed sometimes as a new continent, sometimes merely as an island, sometimes compromisingly as an island-continent, according to individual opinion. The discovery of the insularity of Greenland might again give rise to the argument as to the distinction between island and continent. Although the name of continent was not applied to large portions of land for any physical reasons, it so happens that there is a certain physical similarity or homology between them which is not shared by the smaller islands or peninsulas.
The typical continental form is triangular as regards its sea-level outline. The relief of the surface typically includes a central plain, sometimes dipping below sea-level, bounded by lateral highlands or mountain ranges, loftier on one side than on the other, the higher enclosing a plateau shut in byHomology of continents. mountains. South America and North America follow this type most closely; Eurasia (the land mass of Europe and Asia) comes next, while Africa and Australia are farther removed from the type, and the structure of Antarctica and Greenland is unknown.
If the continuous, unbroken, horizontal extent of land in a continent is termed its trunk, and the portions cut up by inlets or channels of the sea into islands and peninsulas the limbs, it is possible to compare the continents in an instructive manner.
The following table is from the statistics of Professor H. Wagner, his metric measurements being transposed into British units:
The usual classification of islands is into continental and oceanic. The former class includes all those which rise from the continental shelf, or show evidence in the character of their rocks of having at one time been continuous with a neighbouring continent. The latter rise abruptly from the oceanic abysses.Islands. Oceanic islands are divided according to their geological character into volcanic islands and those of organic origin, including coral islands. More elaborate subdivisions according to structure, origin and position have been proposed. In some cases a piece of land is only an island at high water, and by imperceptible gradation the form passes into a peninsula. The typical peninsula is connected with the mainland by a relatively narrow isthmus; the name is, however, extended to any limb projecting from the trunk of the mainland, even when, as in the Indian peninsula, it is connected by its widest part.
Small peninsulas are known as promontories or headlands, and the extremity as a cape. The opposite form, an inlet of the sea, is known when wide as a gulf, bay or bight, according to size and degree of inflection, or as a fjord or ria when long and narrow. It is convenient to employ a specific name for aCoasts. projection of a coast-line less pronounced than a peninsula, and for an inlet less pronounced than a bay or bight; outcurve and incurve may serve the turn. The varieties of coast-lines were reduced to an exact classification by Richthofen, who grouped them according to the height and slope of the land into cliff-coasts (Steilküsten)—narrow beach coasts with cliffs, wide beach coasts with cliffs, and low coasts, subdividing each group according as the coast-line runs parallel to or crosses the line of strike of the mountains, or is not related to mountain structure. A further subdivision depends on the character of the inter-relation of land and sea along the shore producing such types as a fjord-coast, ria-coast or lagoon-coast. This extremely elaborate subdivision may be reduced, as Wagner points out, to three types—the continental coast where the sea comes up to the solid rock-material of the land; the marine coast, which is formed entirely of soft material sorted out by the sea; and the composite coast, in which both forms are combined.
On large-scale maps it is necessary to show two coast-lines, one for the highest, the other for the lowest tide; but in small-scale maps a single line is usually wider than is required to represent the whole breadth of the inter-tidal zone. The measurement of a coast-line is difficult, becauseCoast-lines. the length will necessarily be greater when measured on a large-scale map where minute irregularities can be taken into account. It is usual to distinguish between the general coast-line measured from point to point of the headlands disregarding the smaller bays, and the detailed coast-line which takes account of every inflection shown by the map employed, and follows up river entrances to the point where tidal action ceases. The ratio between these two coast-lines represents the “coastal development” of any region.
While the forms of the sea-bed are not yet sufficiently well known to admit of exact classification, they are recognized to be as a rule distinct from the forms of the land, and the importance of using a distinctive terminology is felt. Efforts have been made to arrive at a definite international agreementSubmarine forms. on this subject, and certain terms suggested by a committee were adopted by the Eighth International Geographical Congress at New York in 1904. The forms of the ocean floor include the “shelf,” or shallow sea margin, the “depression,” a general term applied to all submarine hollows, and the “elevation.” A depression when of great extent is termed a “basin,” when it is of a more or less round form with approximately equal diameters, a “trough” when it is wide and elongated with gently sloping borders, and a “trench” when narrow and elongated with steeply sloping borders, one of which rises higher than the other. The extension of a trough or basin penetrating the land or an elevation is termed an “embayment” when wide, and a “gully” when long and narrow; and the deepest part of a depression is termed a “deep.” A depression of small extent when steep-sided is termed a “caldron,” and a long narrow depression crossing a part of the continental border is termed a “furrow.” An elevation of great extent which rises at a very gentle angle from a surrounding depression is termed a “rise,” one which is relatively narrow and steep-sided a “ridge,” and one which is approximately equal in length and breadth but steep-sided a “plateau,” whether it springs direct from a depression or from a rise. An elevation of small extent is distinguished as a “dome” when it is more than 100 fathoms from the surface, a “bank” when it is nearer the surface than 100 fathoms but deeper than 6 fathoms, and a “shoal” when it comes within 6 fathoms of the surface and so becomes a serious danger to shipping. The highest point of an elevation is termed a “height,” if it does not form an island or one of the minor forms.
The forms of the dry land are of infinite variety, and have been studied in great detail. From the descriptive or topographical point of view, geometrical form alone should be considered; but the origin and geological structure of land forms must in many cases be taken into account Land forms. when dealing with the function they exercise in the control of mobile distributions. The geographers who have hitherto given most attention to the forms of the land have been trained as geologists, and consequently there is a general tendency to make origin or structure the basis of classification rather than form alone.
The fundamental form-elements may be reduced to the six proposed by Professor Penck as the basis of his double system of classification by form and origin. These may be looked upon as being all derived by various modifications or arrangements of the single form-unit, the slope or inclinedThe six elementary land forms. plane surface. No one form occurs alone, but always grouped together with others in various ways to make up districts, regions and lands of distinctive characters. The form-elements are:
1. The plain or gently inclined uniform surface. 2. The scarp or steeply inclined slope; this is necessarily of small extent except in the direction of its length. 3. The valley, composed of two lateral parallel slopes inclined towards a narrow strip of plain at a lower level which itself slopes downwards in the direction of its length. Many varieties of this fundamental form may be distinguished. 4. The mount, composed of a surface falling away on every side from a particular place. This place may either be a point, as in a volcanic cone, or a line, as in a mountain range or ridge of hills. 5. The hollow or form produced by a land surface sloping inwards from all sides to a particular lowest place, the converse of a mount. 6. The cavern or space entirely surrounded by a land surface.
These forms never occur scattered haphazard over a region, but always in an orderly subordination depending on their mode of origin. The dominant forms result from crustal movements, the subsidiary from secondary reactions during the action of the primitive forms on mobile distributions.Geology and land forms. The geological structure and the mineral composition of the rocks are often the chief causes determining the character of the land forms of a region. Thus the scenery of a limestone country depends on the solubility and permeability of the rocks, leading to the typical Karst-formations of caverns, swallow-holes and underground stream courses, with the contingent phenomena of dry valleys and natural bridges. A sandy beach or desert owes its character to the mobility of its constituent sand-grains, which are readily drifted and piled up in the form of dunes. A region where volcanic activity has led to the embedding of dykes or bosses of hard rock amongst softer strata produces a plain broken by abrupt and isolated eminences.
It would be impracticable to go fully into the varieties of each specific form; but, partly as an example of modern geographical classification, partly because of the exceptional importance of mountains amongst the features of the land, one exception may be made. The classification of mountains Classification of mountains. into types has usually had regard rather to geological structure than to external form, so that some geologists would even apply the name of a mountain range to a region not distinguished by relief from the rest of the country if it bear geological evidence of having once been a true range. A mountain may be described (it cannot be defined) as an elevated region of irregular surface rising comparatively abruptly from lower ground. The actual elevation of a summit above sea-level does not necessarily affect its mountainous character; a gentle eminence, for instance, rising a few hundred feet above a tableland, even if at an elevation of say 15,000 ft., could only be called a hill. But it may be said that any abrupt slope of 2000 ft. or more in vertical height may justly be called a mountain, while abrupt slopes of lesser height may be called hills. Existing classifications, however, do not take account of any difference in kind between mountain and hills, although it is common in the German language to speak of Hügelland, Mittelgebirge and Hochgebirge with a definite significance.
The simple classification employed by Professor James Geikie into mountains of accumulation, mountains of elevation and mountains of circumdenudation, is not considered sufficiently thorough by German geographers, who, following Richthofen, generally adopt a classification dependent on six primary divisions, each of which is subdivided. The terms employed, especially for the subdivisions, cannot be easily translated into other languages, and the English equivalents in the following table are only put forward tentatively:—
Richthofens's Classification of Mountains
* Tektonische Gebirge—Tectonic mountains. Bruchgebirge oder Schollengebirge—Block mountains. Einseitige Schollengebirge oder Schollenrandgebirge— Scarp or tilted block mountains. Tafelscholle—Table blocks.Abrasionsscholle—Abraded blocks.Transgressionsscholle—Blocks of unconformable strata.Flexurgebirge—Flexure mountains.Horstgebirge—Symmetrical block mountains.Faltungsgebirge—Fold mountains. Homöomorphe Faltungsgebirge—Homomorphic fold mountains.Heteromorphe Faltungsgebirge—Heteromorphic fold mountains.
* Rumpfgebirge oder Abrasionsgebirge—Trunk or abraded mountains.
* Ausbruchsgebirge—Eruptive mountains.
* Aufschüttungsgebirge—Mountains of accumulation.
* Flachböden—Plateaux. Abrasionsplatten—Abraded plateaux.Marines Flachland—Plain of marine erosion.Schichtungstafellan—Horizontally stratified tableland.Ubergusstafelland—Lava plain.Stromflachland—River plain.Flachböden der atmosphärischen Aufschüttung—Plains of aeolian formation.
* Erosionsgebirge—Mountains of erosion.
From the morphological point of view it is more important to distinguish the associations of forms, such as the mountain mass or group of mountains radiating from a centre, with the valleys furrowing their flanks spreading towards every direction; the mountain chain or line of heights, forming aMountain forms. long narrow ridge or series of ridges separated by parallel valleys; the dissected plateau or highland, divided into mountains of circumdenudation by a system of deeply-cut valleys; and the isolated peak, usually a volcanic cone or a hard rock mass left projecting after the softer strata which embedded it have been worn away (Monadnock of Professor Davis).
The geographical distribution of mountains is intimately associated with the great structural lines of the continents of which they form the culminating region. Lofty lines of fold mountains form the “backbones” of North America in the Rocky Mountains and the west coast systems, of South AmericaDistribution of mountains. in the Cordillera of the Andes, of Europe in the Pyrenees, Alps, Carpathians and Caucasus, and of Asia in the mountains of Asia Minor, converging on the Pamirs and diverging thence in the Himalaya and the vast mountain systems of central and eastern Asia. The remarkable line of volcanoes around the whole coast of the Pacific and along the margin of the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas is one of the most conspicuous features of the globe.
If land forms may be compared to organs, the part they serve in the economy of the earth may, without straining the term, be characterized as functions. The first and simplest function of the land surface is that of guiding loose material to a lower level. The downward pull of gravityFunctions of land forms. Land waste. Glaciers. suffices to bring about the fall of such material, but the path it will follow and the distance it will travel before coming to rest depend upon the land form. The loose material may, and in an arid region does, consist only of portions of the higher parts of the surface detached by the expansion and contraction produced by heating and cooling due to radiation. Such broken material rolling down a uniform scarp would tend to reduce its steepness by the loss of material in the upper part and by the accumulation of a mound or scree against the lower part of the slope. But where the side is not a uniform scarp, but made up of a series of ridges and valleys, the tendency will be to distribute the detritus in an irregular manner, directing it away from one place and collecting it in great masses in another, so that in time the land form assumes a new appearance. Snow accumulating on the higher portions of the land, when compacted into ice and caused to flow downwards by gravity, gives rise, on account of its more coherent character, to continuous glaciers, which mould themselves to the slopes down which they are guided, different ice-streams converging to send forward a greater volume. Gradually coming to occupy definite beds, which are deepened and polished by the friction, they impress a characteristic appearance on the land, which guides them as they traverse it, and, although the ice melts at lower levels, vast quantities of clay and broken stones are brought down and deposited in terminal moraines where the glacier ends.
Rain is by far the most important of the inorganic mobile distributions upon which land forms exercise their function of guidance and control. The precipitation of rain from the aqueous vapour of the atmosphere is caused in part by vertical movements of the atmosphere involving heat changes and apparently Rain.independent of the surface upon which precipitation occurs; but in greater part it is dictated by the form and altitude of the land surface and the direction of the prevailing winds, which itself is largely influenced by the land. It is on the windward faces of the highest ground, or just beyond the summit of less dominant heights upon the leeward side, that most rain falls, and all that does not evaporate or percolate into the ground is conducted back to the sea by a route which depends only on the form of the land. More mobile and more searching than ice or rock rubbish, the trickling drops are guided by the deepest lines of the hillside in their incipient flow, and as these lines converge, the stream, gaining strength,River systems. proceeds in its torrential course to carve its channel deeper and entrench itself in permanent occupation. Thus the stream-bed, from which at first the water might be blown away into a new channel by a gale of wind, ultimately grows to be the strongest line of the landscape. As the main valley deepens, the tributary stream-beds are deepened also, and gradually cut their way headwards, enlarging the area whence they draw their supplies. Thus new land forms are created—valleys of curious complexity, for example—by ​ the “capture” and diversion of the water of one river by another, leading to a change of watershed. The minor tributaries become more numerous and more constant, until the system of torrents has impressed its own individuality on the mountain side. As the river leaves the mountain, ever growing by the accession of tributaries, it ceases, save in flood time, to be a formidable instrument of destruction; the gentler slope of the land surface gives to it only power sufficient to transport small stones, gravel, sand and ultimately mud. Its valley banks are cut back by the erosion of minor tributaries, or by rain-wash if the climate be moist, or left steep and sharp while the river deepens its bed if the climate be arid. The outline of the curve of a valley’s sides ultimately depends on the angle of repose of the detritus which covers them, if there has been no subsequent change, such as the passage of a glacier along the valley, which tends to destroy the regularity of the cross-section. The slope of the river bed diminishes until the plain compels the river to move slowly, swinging in meanders proportioned to its size, and gradually, controlled by the flattening land, ceasing to transport material, but raising its banks and silting up its bed by the dropped sediment, until, split up and shoaled, its distributaries struggle across its delta to the sea. This is the typical river of which there are infinite varieties, yet every variety would, if time were given, and the land remained unchanged in level relatively to the sea, ultimately approach to the type.Adjustment of rivers to land. Movements of the land either of subsidence or elevation, changes in the land by the action of erosion in cutting back an escarpment or cutting through a col, changes in climate by affecting the rainfall and the volume of water, all tend to throw the river valley out of harmony with the actual condition of its stream. There is nothing more striking in geography than the perfection of the adjustment of a great river system to its valleys when the land has remained stable for a very lengthened period. Before full adjustment has been attained the river bed may be broken in places by waterfalls or interrupted by lakes; after adjustment the bed assumes a permanent outline, the slope diminishing more and more gradually, without a break in its symmetrical descent. Excellent examples of the indecisive drainage of a new land surface, on which the river system has not had time to impress itself, are to be seen in northern Canada and in Finland, where rivers are separated by scarcely perceptible divides, and the numerous lakes frequently belong to more than one river system.
The action of rivers on the land is so important that it has been made the basis of a system of physical geography by Professor W. M. Davis, who classifies land surfaces in terms of the three factors—structure, process and time. Of these time, during which the process is acting on theThe geographical cycle. structure, is the most important. A land may thus be characterized by its position in the “geographical cycle”, or cycle of erosion, as young, mature or old, the last term being reached when the base-level of erosion is attained, and the land, however varied its relief may have been in youth or maturity, is reduced to a nearly uniform surface or peneplain. By a re-elevation of a peneplain the rivers of an old land surface may be restored to youthful activity, and resume their shaping action, deepening the old valleys and initiating new ones, starting afresh the whole course of the geographical cycle. It is, however, not the action of the running water on the land, but the function exercised by the land on the running water, that is considered here to be the special province of geography. At every stage of the geographical cycle the land forms, as they exist at that stage, are concerned in guiding the condensation and flow of water in certain definite ways. Thus, for example, in a mountain range at right angles to a prevailing sea-wind, it is the land forms which determine that one side of the range shall be richly watered and deeply dissected by a complete system of valleys, while the other side is dry, indefinite in its valley systems, and sends none of its scanty drainage to the sea. The action of rain, ice and rivers conspires with the movement of land waste to strip the layer of soil from steep slopes as rapidly as it forms, and to cause it to accumulate on the flat valley bottoms, on the graceful flattened cones of alluvial fans at the outlet of the gorges of tributaries, or in the smoothly-spread surface of alluvial plains.
The whole question of the régime of rivers and lakes is sometimes treated under the name hydrography, a name used by some writers in the sense of marine surveying, and by others as synonymous with oceanography. For the study of rivers alone the name potamology has been suggested by Penck, and the subject being of much practical importance has received a good deal of attention.
The study of lakes has also been specialized under the name of limnology (see Lake). The existence of lakes in hollows of the land depends upon the balance between precipitation and evaporation. A stream flowing into a hollow will tend to fill it up, and the water will begin to escape as soon as its level rises highLakes and internal drainage. enough to reach the lowest part of the rim. In the case of a large hollow in a very dry climate the rate of evaporation may be sufficient to prevent the water from ever rising to the lip, so that there is no outflow to the sea, and a basin of internal drainage is the result. This is the case, for instance, in the Caspian sea, the Aral and Balkhash lakes, the Tarim basin, the Sahara, inner Australia, the great basin of the United States and the Titicaca basin. These basins of internal drainage are calculated to amount to 22% of the land surface. The percentages of the land surface draining to the different oceans are approximately—Atlantic, 34.3%; Arctic sea, 16.5%; Pacific, 14.4%; Indian Ocean, 12.8%.
The parts of a river system have not been so clearly defined as is desirable, hence the exaggerated importance popularly attached to “the source” of a river. A well-developed river system has in fact many equally important and widely-separated sources, the most distant from the mouth, the highest,Terminology of river systems. or even that of largest initial volume not being necessarily of greater geographical interest than the rest. The whole of the land which directs drainage towards one river is known as its basin, catchment area or drainage area—sometimes, by an incorrect expression, as its valley or even its watershed. The boundary line between one drainage area and others is rightly termed the watershed, but on account of the ambiguity which has been tolerated it is better to call it water-parting or, as in America, divide. The only other important term which requires to be noted here is talweg, a word introduced from the German into French and English, and meaning the deepest line along the valley, which is necessarily occupied by a stream unless the valley is dry.
The functions of land forms extend beyond the control of the circulation of the atmosphere, the hydrosphere and the water which is continually being interchanged between them; they are exercised with increased effect in the higher departments of biogeography and anthropogeography.
​ The classification of the land surface into areas inhabited by distinctive groups of plants has been attempted by many phytogeographers, but without resulting in any scheme of general acceptance. The simplest classification is perhaps that of Drude according to climatic zones, subdividedFloral zones. according to continents. This takes account of—(1) the Arctic-Alpine zone, including all the vegetation of the region bordering on perpetual snow; (2) the Boreal zone, including the temperate lands of North America, Europe and Asia, all of which are substantially alike in botanical character; (3) the Tropical zone, divided sharply into (a) the tropical zone of the New World, and (b) the tropical zone of the Old World, the forms of which differ in a significant degree; (4) the Austral zone, comprising all continental land south of the equator, and sharply divided into three regions the floras of which are strikingly distinct—(a) South American, (b) South African and (c) Australian; (5) the Oceanic, comprising all oceanic islands, the flora of which consists exclusively of forms whose seeds could be drifted undestroyed by ocean currents or carried by birds. To these might be added the antarctic, which is still very imperfectly known. Many subdivisions and transitional zones have been suggested by different authors.
From the point of view of the economy of the globe this classification by species is perhaps less important than that by mode of life and physiological character in accordance with environment. The following are the chief areas of vegetational activity usually recognized: (1) The ice-desertsVegetation areas. of the arctic and antarctic and the highest mountain regions, where there is no vegetation except the lowest forms, like that which causes “red snow.” (2) The tundra or region of intensely cold winters, forbidding tree-growth, where mosses and lichens cover most of the ground when unfrozen, and shrubs occur of species which in other conditions are trees, here stunted to the height of a few inches. A similar zone surrounds the permanent snow on lofty mountains in all latitudes. The tundra passes by imperceptible gradations into the moor, bog and heath of warmer climates. (3) The temperate forests of evergreen or deciduous trees, according to circumstances, which occupy those parts of both temperate zones where rainfall and sunlight are both abundant. (4) The grassy steppes or prairies where the rainfall is diminished and temperatures are extreme, and grass is the prevailing form of vegetation. These pass imperceptibly into—(5) the arid desert, where rainfall is at a minimum, and the only plants are those modified to subsist with the smallest supply of water. (6) The tropical forest, which represents the maximum of plant luxuriance, stimulated by the heaviest rainfall, greatest heat and strongest light. These divisions merge one into the other, and admit of almost indefinite subdivision, while they are subject to great modifications by human interference in clearing and cultivating. Plants exhibit the controlling power of environment to a high degree, and thus vegetation is usually in close adjustment to the bolder geographical features of a region.
The divisions of the earth into faunal regions by Dr P. L. Sclater have been found to hold good for a large number of groups of animals as different in their mode of life as birds and mammals, and they may thus be accepted as based on nature. They are six in number: (1) Palaearctic, includingFaunal realms. Europe, Asia north of the Himalaya, and Africa north of the Sahara; (2) Ethiopian, consisting of Africa south of the Atlas range, and Madagascar; (3) Oriental, including India, Indo-China and the Malay Archipelago north of Wallace’s line, which runs between Bali and Lombok; (4) Australian, including Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and Polynesia; (5) Nearctic or North America, north of Mexico; and (6) Neotropical or South America. Each of these divisions is the home of a special fauna, many species of which are confined to it alone; in the Australian region, indeed, practically the whole fauna is peculiar and distinctive, suggesting a prolonged period of complete biological isolation. In some cases, such as the Ethiopian and Neotropical and the Palaearctic and Nearctic regions, the faunas, although distinct, are related, several forms on opposite sides of the Atlantic being analogous, e.g. the lion and puma, ostrich and rhea. Where two of the faunal realms meet there is usually, though not always, a mixing of faunas. These facts have led some naturalists to include the Palaearctic and Nearctic regions in one, termed Holarctic, and to suggest transitional regions, such as the Sonoran, between North and South America, and the Mediterranean, between Europe and Africa, or to create sub-regions, such as Madagascar and New Zealand. Oceanic islands have, as a rule, distinctive faunas and floras which resemble, but are not identical with, those of other islands in similar positions.
The study of the evolution of faunas and the comparison of the faunas of distant regions have furnished a trustworthy instrument of pre-historic geographical research, which enables earlier geographical relations of land and sea to be traced out, and the approximate period, or at least theBiological distribution as a means of geographical research. chronological order of the larger changes, to be estimated. In this way, for example, it has been suggested that a land, “Lemuria,” once connected Madagascar with the Malay Archipelago, and that a northern extension of the antarctic land once united the three southern continents.
The distribution of fossils frequently makes it possible to map out approximately the general features of land and sea in long-past geological periods, and so to enable the history of crustal relief to be traced.
While the tendency is for the living forms to come into harmony with their environment and to approach the state of equilibrium by successive adjustments if the environment should happen to change, it is to be observed that the action of organisms themselves often tends to change theirReaction of organisms on environment. environment. Corals and other quick-growing calcareous marine organisms are the most powerful in this respect by creating new land in the ocean. Vegetation of all sorts acts in a similar way, either in forming soil and assisting in breaking up rocks, in filling up shallow lakes, and even, like the mangrove, in reclaiming wide stretches of land from the sea. Plant life, utilizing solar light to combine the inorganic elements of water, soil and air into living substance, is the basis of all animal life. This is not by the supply of food alone, but also by the withdrawal of carbonic acid from the atmosphere, by which vegetation maintains the composition of the air in a state fit for the support of animal life. Man in the primitive stages of culture is scarcely to be distinguished from other animals as regards his subjection to environment, but in the higher grades of culture the conditions of control and reaction become much more complicated, and the department of anthropogeography is devoted to their consideration.
The first requisites of all human beings are food and protection, in their search for which men are brought into intimate relations with the forms and productions of the earth’s surface. The degree of dependence of any people upon environment varies inversely as the degree of culture or civilization,Anthropo- geography. which for this purpose may perhaps be defined as the power of an individual to exercise control over the individual and over the environment for the benefit of the community. The development of culture is to a certain extent a question of race, and although forming one species, the varieties of man differ in almost imperceptible gradations with a complexity defying classification (see Anthropology). Professor Keane groups man round four leading types, which may be named the black, yellow, red and white, or the Ethiopic, Mongolic, American and Caucasic. Each may be subdivided, though not with great exactness, into smaller groups, either according to physical characteristics, of which the form of the head is most important, or according to language.
The black type is found only in tropical or sub-tropical countries, and is usually in a primitive condition of culture, unless educated by contact with people of the white type. They follow the most primitive forms of religion (mainly fetishism), live on products of the woods or of the chase, with theTypes of man. minimum of work, and have only a loose political organization. The red type is peculiar to America, inhabiting every climate from polar to equatorial, and containing representatives of many stages of culture which had apparently developed without the aid or interference of people of any other race until the close of the 15th century. The yellow type is capable of a higher culture, cherishes higher religious beliefs, and inhabits as a rule the temperate zone, although extending to the tropics on one side and to the arctic regions on the other. The white type, originating in the north temperate zone, has spread over the whole world. They have attained the highest culture, profess the purest forms of monotheistic religion, and have brought all the people of the black type and many of those of the yellow under their domination.
The contrast between the yellow and white types has been softened by the remarkable development of the Japanese following the assimilation of western methods.
The actual number of human inhabitants in the world has been calculated as follows:
| By Continents | By Race |
In round numbers the population of the world is about 1,600,000,000, and, according to an estimate by Ravenstein, the maximum population which it will be possible for the earth to maintain is 6000 millions, a number which, if the average rate of increase in 1891 continued, would be reached within 200 years.
While highly civilized communities are able to evade many of the restrictions of environment, to overcome the barriers to intercommunication interposed by land or sea, to counteract the adverse ​influence of climate, and by the development of trade even to inhabit countries which cannot yield a food-supply, the mass of mankind is still completely under the control of those conditions which in the past determined the distribution and the mode of life of the whole human race.
In tropical forests primitive tribes depend on the collection of wild fruits, and in a minor degree on the chase of wild animals, for their food. Clothing is unnecessary; hence there is little occasion for exercising the mental faculties beyond the sense of perception to avoid enemies, or the inventiveInfluence of environment on man. arts beyond what is required for the simplest weapons and the most primitive fortifications. When the pursuit of game becomes the chief occupation of a people there is of necessity a higher development of courage, skill, powers of observation and invention; and these qualities are still further enhanced in predatory tribes who take by force the food, clothing and other property prepared or collected by a feebler people. The fruit-eating savage cannot stray beyond his woods which bound his life as the water bounds that of a fish; the hunter is free to live on the margin of forests or in open country, while the robber or warrior from some natural stronghold of the mountains sweeps over the adjacent plains and carries his raids into distant lands. Wide grassy steppes lead to the organization of the people as nomads whose wealth consists in flocks and herds, and their dwellings are tents. The nomad not only domesticates and turns to his own use the gentler and more powerful animals, such as sheep, cattle, horses, camels, but even turns some predatory creatures, like the dog, into a means of defending their natural prey. They hunt the beasts of prey destructive to their flocks, and form armed bands for protection against marauders or for purposes of aggression on weaker sedentary neighbours. On the fertile low grounds along the margins of rivers or in clearings of forests, agricultural communities naturally take their rise, dwelling in villages and cultivating the wild grains, which by careful nurture and selection have been turned into rich cereals. The agriculturist as a rule is rooted to the soil. The land he tills he holds, and acquires a closer connexion with a particular patch of ground than either the hunter or the herdsman. In the temperate zone, where the seasons are sharply contrasted, but follow each other with regularity, foresight and self-denial were fostered, because if men did not exercise these qualities seed-time or harvest might pass into lost opportunities and the tribes would suffer. The more extreme climates of arid regions on the margins of the tropics, by the unpredictable succession of droughts and floods, confound the prevision of uninstructed people, and make prudence and industry qualities too uncertain in their results to be worth cultivating. Thus the civilization of agricultural peoples of the temperate zone grew rapidly, yet in each community a special type arose adapted to the soil, the crop and the climate. On the seashore fishing naturally became a means of livelihood, and dwellers by the sea, in virtue of the dangers to which they are exposed from storm and unseaworthy craft, are stimulated to a higher degree of foresight, quicker observation, prompter decision and more energetic action in emergencies than those who live inland. The building and handling of vessels also, and the utilization of such uncontrollable powers of nature as wind and tide, helped forward mechanical invention. To every type of coast there may be related a special type of occupation and even of character; the deep and gloomy fjord, backed by almost impassable mountains, bred bold mariners whose only outlet for enterprise was seawards towards other lands—the viks created the vikings. On the gently sloping margin of the estuary of a great river a view of tranquil inland life was equally presented to the shore-dweller, and the ocean did not present the only prospect of a career. Finally the mountain valley, with its patches of cultivable soil on the alluvial fans of tributary torrents, its narrow pastures on the uplands only left clear of snow in summer, its intensified extremes of climates and its isolation, almost equal to that of an island, has in all countries produced a special type of brave and hardy people, whose utmost effort may bring them comfort, but not wealth, by honest toil, who know little of the outer world, and to whom the natural outlet for ambition is marauding on the fertile plains. The highlander and viking, products of the valleys raised high amid the mountains or half-drowned in the sea, are everywhere of kindred spirit.
It is in some such manner as these that the natural conditions of regions, which must be conformed to by prudence and utilized by labour to yield shelter and food, have led to the growth of peoples differing in their ways of life, thought and speech. The initial differences so produced are confirmed and perpetuated by the same barriers which divide the faunal or floral regions, the sea, mountains, deserts and the like, and much of the course of past history and present politics becomes clear when the combined results of differing race and differing environment are taken into account.
The specialization which accompanies the division of labour has important geographical consequences, for it necessitates communication between communities and the interchange of their products. Trade makes it possible to work mineral resources in localities where food can only be grown with great Density of population. difficulty and expense, or which are even totally barren and waterless, entirely dependent on supplies from distant sources.
The population which can be permanently supported by a given area of land differs greatly according to the nature of the resources and the requirements of the people. Pastoral communities are always scattered very thinly over large areas; agricultural populations may be almost equally sparse where advanced methods of agriculture and labour-saving machinery are employed; but where a frugal people are situated on a fertile and inexhaustible soil, such as the deltas and river plains of Egypt, India and China, an enormous population may be supported on a small area. In most cases, however, a very dense population can only be maintained in regions where mineral resources have fixed the site of great manufacturing industries. The maximum density of population which a given region can support is very difficult to determine; it depends partly on the race and standard of culture of the people, partly on the nature and origin of the resources on which they depend, partly on the artificial burdens imposed and very largely on the climate. Density of population is measured by the average number of people residing on a unit of area; but in order to compare one part of the world with another the average should, strictly speaking, be taken for regions of equal size or of equal population; and the portions of the country which are permanently uninhabitable ought to be excluded from the calculation. Considering the average density of population within the political limits of countries, the following list is of some value; the figures for a few smaller divisions of large countries are added (in brackets) for comparison:
The movement of people from one place to another without the immediate intention of returning is known as migration, and according to its origin it may be classed as centrifugal (directed from a particular area) and centripetal (directed towards a particular area). Centrifugal migration is usually a matter ofMigration. compulsion; it may be necessitated by natural causes, such as a change of climate leading to the withering of pastures or destruction of agricultural land, to inundation, earthquake, pestilence or to an excess of population over means of support; or to artificial causes, such as the wholesale deportation of a conquered people; or to political or religious persecution. In any case the people are driven out by some adverse change; and when the urgency is great they may require to drive out in turn weaker people who occupy a desirable territory, thus propagating the wave of migration, the direction of which is guided by the forms of the land into inevitable channels. Many of the great historic movements of peoples were doubtless due to the gradual change of geographical or climatic conditions; and the slow desiccation of Central Asia has been plausibly suggested as the real cause of the peopling of modern Europe and of the medieval wars of the Old World, the theatres of which were critical points on the great natural lines of communication between east and west.
In the case of centripetal migrations people flock to some particular place where exceptionally favourable conditions have been found to exist. The rushes to gold-fields and diamond-fields are typical instances; the growth of towns on coal-fields and near other sources of power, and the rapid settlement of such rich agricultural districts as the wheat-lands of the American prairies and great plains are other examples.
There is, however, a tendency for people to remain rooted to the ​ land of their birth, when not compelled or induced by powerful external causes to seek a new home.
Thus arises the spirit of patriotism, a product of purely geographical conditions, thereby differing from the sentiment of loyalty, which is of racial origin. Where race and soil conspire to evoke both loyalty and patriotism in a people, the moral qualities of a great and permanent nation are secured.Political geography. It is noticeable that the patriotic spirit is strongest in those places where people are brought most intimately into relation with the land; dwellers in the mountain or by the sea, and, above all, the people of rugged coasts and mountainous archipelagoes, have always been renowned for love of country, while the inhabitants of fertile plains and trading communities are frequently less strongly attached to their own land.
Amongst nomads the tribe is the unit of government, the political bond is personal, and there is no definite territorial association of the people, who may be loyal but cannot be patriotic. The idea of a country arises only when a nation, either homogeneous or composed of several races, establishes itself in a region the boundaries of which may be defined and defended against aggression from without. Political geography takes account of the partition of the earth amongst organized communities, dealing with the relation of races to regions, and of nations to countries, and considering the conditions of territorial equilibrium and instability.
The definition of boundaries and their delimitation is one of the most important parts of political geography. Natural boundaries are always the most definite and the strongest, lending themselves most readily to defence against aggression. The sea is the most effective of all, and an island state is Boundaries. recognized as the most stable. Next in importance comes a mountain range, but here there is often difficulty as to the definition of the actual crest-line, and mountain ranges being broad regions, it may happen that a small independent state, like Switzerland or Andorra, occupies the mountain valleys between two or more great countries. Rivers do not form effective international boundaries, although between dependent self-governing communities they are convenient lines of demarcation. A desert, or a belt of country left purposely without inhabitants, like the mark, marches or debatable lands of the middle ages, was once a common means of separating nations which nourished hereditary grievances. The “buffer-state” of modern diplomacy is of the same ineffectual type. A less definite though very practical boundary is that formed by the meeting-line of two languages, or the districts inhabited by two races. The line of fortresses protecting Austria from Italy lies in some places well back from the political boundary, but just inside the linguistic frontier, so as to separate the German and Italian races occupying Austrian territory. Arbitrary lines, either traced from point to point and marked by posts on the ground, or defined as portions of meridians and parallels, are now the most common type of boundaries fixed by treaty. In Europe and Asia frontiers are usually strongly fortified and strictly watched in times of peace as well as during war. In South America strictly defined boundaries are still the exception, and the claims of neighbouring nations have very frequently given rise to war, though now more commonly to arbitration.
The modes of government amongst civilized peoples have little influence on political geography; some republics are as arbitrary and exacting in their frontier regulations as some absolute monarchies. It is, however, to be noticed that absolute monarchies are confined to the east of Europe and toForms of government. Asia, Japan being the only established constitutional monarchy east of the Carpathians. Limited monarchies are (with the exception of Japan) peculiar to Europe, and in these the degree of democratic control may be said to diminish as one passes eastwards from the United Kingdom. Republics, although represented in Europe, are the peculiar form of government of America and are unknown in Asia.
The forms of government of colonies present a series of transitional types from the autocratic administration of a governor appointed by the home government to complete democratic self-government. The latter occurs only in the temperate possessions of the British empire, in which there is no great preponderance of a coloured native population. New colonial forms have been developed during the partition of Africa amongst European powers, the sphere of influence being especially worthy of notice. This is a vaguer form of control than a protectorate, and frequently amounts merely to an agreement amongst civilized powers to respect the right of one of their number to exercise government within a certain area, if it should decide to do so at any future time.
The central governments of all civilized countries concerned with external relations are closely similar in their modes of action, but the internal administration may be very varied. In this respect a country is either centralized, like the United Kingdom or France, or federated of distinct self-governing units like Germany (where the units include kingdoms, at least three minor types of monarchies, municipalities and a crown land under a nominated governor), or the United States, where the units are democratic republics. The ultimate cause of the predominant form of federal government may be the geographical diversity of the country, as in the cantons occupying the once isolated mountain valleys of Switzerland, the racial diversity of the people, as in Austria-Hungary, or merely political expediency, as in republics of the American type.
The minor subdivisions into provinces, counties and parishes, or analogous areas, may also be related in many cases to natural features or racial differences perpetuated by historical causes. The territorial divisions and subdivisions often survive the conditions which led to their origin; hence the study of political geography is allied to history as closely as the study of physical geography is allied to geology, and for the same reason.
The aggregation of population in towns was at one time mainly brought about by the necessity for defence, a fact indicated by the defensive sites of many old towns. In later times, towns have been more often founded in proximity to valuable mineral resources, and at critical points or nodes on linesTowns. of communication. These are places where the mode of travelling or of transport is changed, such as seaports, river ports and railway termini, or natural resting-places, such as a ford, the foot of a steep ascent on a road, the entrance of a valley leading up from a plain into the mountains, or a crossing-place of roads or railways. The existence of a good natural harbour is often sufficient to give origin to a town and to fix one end of a line of land communication.
In countries of uniform surface or faint relief, roads and railways may be constructed in any direction without regard to the configuration. In places where the low ground is marshy, roads and railways often follow the ridge-lines of hills, or, as in Finland, the old glacial eskers, which run parallelLines of communi-cation. to the shore. Wherever the relief of the land is pronounced, roads and railways are obliged to occupy the lowest ground winding along the valleys of rivers and through passes in the mountains. In exceptional cases obstructions which it would be impossible or too costly to turn are overcome by a bridge or tunnel, the magnitude of such works increasing with the growth of engineering skill and financial enterprise. Similarly the obstructions offered to water communication by interruption through land or shallows are overcome by cutting canals or dredging out channels. The economy and success of most lines of communication depend on following as far as possible existing natural lines and utilizing existing natural sources of power.
Commercial geography may be defined as the description of the earth’s surface with special reference to the discovery, production, transport and exchange of commodities. The transport concerns land routes and sea routes, the latter being the more important. While steam has been said to Commercial geography. make a ship independent of wind and tide, it is still true that a long voyage even by steam must be planned so as to encounter the least resistance possible from prevailing winds and permanent currents, and this involves the application of oceanographical and meteorological knowledge. The older navigation by utilizing the power of the wind demands a very intimate knowledge of these conditions, and it is probable that a revival of sailing ships may in the present century vastly increase the importance of the study of maritime meteorology.
The discovery and production of commodities require a knowledge of the distribution of geological formations for mineral products, of the natural distribution, life-conditions and cultivation or breeding of plants and animals and of the labour market. Attention must also be paid to the artificial restrictions of political geography, to the legislative restrictions bearing on labour and trade as imposed in different countries, and, above all, to the incessant fluctuations of the economic conditions of supply and demand and the combinations of capitalists or workers which affect the market. The term “applied geography” has been employed to designate commercial geography, the fact being that every aspect of scientific geography may be applied to practical purposes, including the purposes of trade. But apart from the applied science, there is an aspect of pure geography which concerns the theory of the relation of economics to the surface of the earth.
It will be seen that as each successive aspect of geographical science is considered in its natural sequence the conditions become ​more numerous, complex, variable and practically important. From the underlying abstract mathematical considerations all through the superimposed physical, biological, anthropological,Conclusion. political and commercial development of the subject runs the determining control exercised by crust-forms acting directly or indirectly on mobile distributions; and this is the essential principle of geography. (H. R. M.)
* ↑ A concise sketch of the whole history of geographical method or theory as distinguished from the history of geographical discovery (see later section of this article) is only to be found in the introduction to H. Wagner’s Lehrbuch der Geographie, vol. i. (Leipzig, 1900), which is in every way the most complete treatise on the principles of geography.
* ↑ History of Ancient Geography (Cambridge, 1897), p. 70.
* ↑ See J. L. Myres, “An Attempt to reconstruct the Maps used by Herodotus,” Geographical Journal, viii. (1896), p. 605.
* ↑ Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen (Leipzig, 1891), Abt. 3, p. 60.
* ↑ Bunbury’s History of Ancient Geography (2 vols., London, 1879), Müller’s Geographi Graeci minores (2 vols., Paris, 1855, 1861) and Berger’s Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen (4 vols., Leipzig, 1887–1893) are standard authorities on the Greek geographers.
* ↑ The period of the early middle ages is dealt with in Beazley’s Dawn of Modern Geography (London; part i., 1897; part ii., 1901; part iii., 1906); see also Winstedt, Cosmas Indicopleustes (1910).
* ↑ From translator’s preface to the English version by Mr Dugdale (1733), entitled A Complete System of General Geography, revised by Dr Peter Shaw (London, 1756).
* ↑ Printed in Schriften zur physischen Geographie, vol. vi. of Schubert’s edition of the collected works of Kant (Leipzig, 1839). First published with notes by Rink in 1802.
* ↑ History of Civilization, vol. i. (1857).
* ↑ See H. J. Mackinder in British Association Report (Ipswich), 1895, p. 738, for a summary of German opinion, which has been expressed by many writers in a somewhat voluminous literature.
* ↑ H. Wagner’s year-book, Geographische Jahrbuch, published at Gotha, is the best systematic record of the progress of geography in all departments; and Haack’s Geographen Kalender, also published annually at Gotha, gives complete lists of the geographical societies and geographers of the world.
* ↑ This phrase is old, appearing in one of the earliest English works on geography, William Cuningham’s Cosmographical Glasse conteinyng the pleasant Principles of Cosmographie, Geographie, Hydrographie or Navigation (London, 1559).
* ↑ See also S. Günther, Handbuch der mathematischen Geographie (Stuttgart, 1890).
* ↑ “On the Height of the Land and the Depth of the Ocean,” Scot. Geog. Mag. iv. (1888), p. 1. Estimates had been made previously by Humboldt, De Lapparent, H. Wagner, and subsequently by Penck and Heiderich, and for the oceans by Karstens.
* ↑ Petermanns Mitteilungen, xxv. (1889), p. 17.
* ↑ Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin. xvii. (1890) p. 185.
* ↑ Comptes rendus Acad. Sci. (Paris, 1890), vol. iii. p. 994.
* ↑ “Areal und mittlere Erhebung der Landflächen sowie der Erdkruste” in Gerland’s Beiträge zur Geophysik, ii. (1895) p. 667. See also Nature, 54 (1896), p. 112.
* ↑ Petermanns Mitteilungen, xxxv. (1889) p. 19.
* ↑ The areas of the continental shelf and lowlands are approximately equal, and it is an interesting circumstance that, taken as a whole, the actual coast-line comes just midway on the most nearly level belt of the earth’s surface, excepting the ocean floor. The configuration of the continental slope has been treated in detail by Nansen in Scientific Results of Norwegian North Polar Expedition, vol. iv. (1904), where full references to the literature of the subject will be found.
* ↑ British Association Report (Edinburgh, 1892), p. 699.
* ↑ Das Antlitz der Erde (4 vols., Leipzig, 1885, 1888, 1901). Translated under the editorship of E. de Margerie, with much additional matter, as La Face de la terre, vols. i. and ii. (Paris, 1897, 1900), and into English by Dr Hertha Sollas as The Face of the Earth, vols. i. and ii. (Oxford, 1904, 1906).
* ↑ Élie de Beaumont, Notice sur les systèmes de montagnes (3 vols., Paris, 1852).
* ↑ Vestiges of the Molten Globe (London, 1875).
* ↑ See J. W. Gregory, “The Plan of the Earth and its Causes,” Geog. Journal, xiii. (1899) p. 225; Lord Avebury, ibid. xv. (1900) p. 46; Marcel Bertrand, “Déformation tétraédrique de la terre et déplacement du pôle,” Comptes rendus Acad. Sci. (Paris, 1900), vol. cxxx. p. 449; and A. de Lapparent, ibid. p. 614.
* ↑ See A. E. H. Love, “Gravitational Stability of the Earth,” Phil. Trans. ser. A. vol. ccvii. (1907) p. 171.
* ↑ Rumpf, in German, the language in which this distinction was first made.
* ↑ Lehrbuch der Geographie (Hanover and Leipzig, 1900), Bd. i. S. 245, 249.
* ↑ See, for example, F. G. Hahn’s Insel-Studien (Leipzig, 1883).
* ↑ See Geographical Journal, xxii. (1903) pp. 191–194.
* ↑ The most important works on the classification of land forms are F. von Richthofen, Führer für Forschungsreisende (Berlin, 1886); G. de la Noë and E. de Margerie, Les Formes du terrain (Paris, 1888); and above all A. Penck, Morphologie der Erdoberfläche (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1894). Compare also A. de Lapparent, Leçons de géographie physique (2nd ed., Paris, 1898), and W. M. Davis, Physical Geography (Boston, 1899).
* ↑ “Geomorphologie als genetische Wissenschaft,” in Report of Sixth International Geog. Congress (London, 1895), p. 735 (English Abstract, p. 748).
* ↑ On this subject see J. Geikie, Earth Sculpture (London, 1898); J. E. Marr, The Scientific Study of Scenery (London, 1900); Sir A. Geikie, The Scenery and Geology of Scotland (London, 2nd ed., 1887); Lord Avebury (Sir J. Lubbock), The Scenery of Switzerland (London, 1896) and The Scenery of England (London, 1902).
* ↑ Some geographers distinguish a mountain from a hill by origin; thus Professor Seeley says “a mountain implies elevation and a hill implies denudation, but the external forms of both are often identical.” Report VI. Int. Geog. Congress (London, 1895), p. 751.
* ↑ “Mountains,” in Scot. Geog. Mag. ii. (1896) p. 145.
* ↑ Führer für Forschungsreisende, pp. 652-685.
* ↑ See, for a summary of river-action, A. Phillipson, Studien über Wasserscheiden (Leipzig, 1886); also I. C. Russell, River Development (London, 1898) (published as The Rivers of North America, New York, 1898).
* ↑ W. M. Davis, “The Geographical Cycle,” Geog. Journ. xiv. (1899) p. 484.
* ↑ A. Penck, “Potamology as a Branch of Physical Geography,” Geog. Journ. x. (1897) p. 619.
* ↑ See, for instance, E. Wisotzki, Hauptfluss und Nebenfluss (Stettin, 1889). For practical studies see official reports on the Mississippi, Rhine, Seine, Elbe and other great rivers.
* ↑ F. A. Forel, Handbuch der Seenkunde: allgemeine Limnologie (Stuttgart, 1901); F. A. Forel, “La Limnologie, branche de la géographie,” Report VI. Int. Geog. Congress (London, 1895), p. 593; also Le Léman (2 vols., Lausanne, 1892, 1894); H. Lullies, “Studien über Seen,” Jubiläumsschrift der Albertus-Universität (Königsberg, 1894); and G. R. Credner, “Die Reliktenseen,” Petermanns Mitteilungen, Ergänzungshefte 86 and 89 (Gotha., 1887, 1888).
* ↑ J. Murray, “Drainage Areas of the Continents,” Scot. Geog. Mag. ii. (1886) p. 548.
* ↑ Wagner, Lehrbuch der Geographie (1900), i. 586.
* ↑ For details, see A. R. Wallace, Geographical Distribution of Animals and Island Life; A. Heilprin, Geographical and Geological Distribution of Animals (1887); O. Drude, Handbuch der Pflanzengeographie; A. Engler, Entwickelungsgeschichte der Pflanzenwelt; also Beddard, Zoogeography (Cambridge, 1895); and Sclater, The Geography of Mammals (London, 1899).
* ↑ See particularly A. de Lapparent, Traité de géologie (4th ed., Paris, 1900).
* ↑ Estimate for 1900. H. Wagner, Lehrbuch der Geographie, i. p.658.
* ↑ Estimate for year not stated. A. H. Keane in International Geography, p. 108.
* ↑ In Proc. R.G.S. xiii. (1891) p. 27.
* ↑ On the influence of land on people see Shaler, Nature and Man in America (New York and London, 1892); and Ellen C. Semple’s American History and its Geographic Conditions (Boston, 1903).
* ↑ See maps of density of population in Bartholomew’s great large-scale atlases, Atlas of Scotland and Atlas of England.
* ↑ Almost entirely industrial.
* ↑ Almost entirely agricultural.
* ↑ For the history of territorial changes in Europe, see Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, edited by Bury (Oxford), 1903; and for the official definition of existing boundaries, see Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty (4 vols., London, 1875, 1891); The Map of Africa by Treaty (3 vols., London, 1896). Also Lord Curzon’s Oxford address on Frontiers (1907).
* ↑ For numerous special instances of the determining causes of town sites, see G. G. Chisholm, “On the Distribution of Towns and Villages in England,” Geographical Journal (1897), ix. 76, x. 511.
* ↑ The whole subject of anthropogeography is treated in a masterly way by F. Ratzel in his Anthropogeographie (Stuttgart, vol. i. 2nd ed., 1899, vol. ii. 1891), and in his Politische Geographie (Leipzig, 1897). The special question of the reaction of man on his environment is handled by G. P. Marsh in Man and Nature, or Physical Geography as modified by Human Action (London, 1864).
* ↑ For commercial geography see G. G. Chisholm, Manual of Commercial Geography (1890).