Kansas City daily journal., 1896-10-07
LANDS THAT ARE LITTLE KNOWN.
Many Parts of the Globe Are Yet Ter
ra Incognita to the Civilized Man.

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| From the New York Herald
1t Is the very general supposition that
| there Is very little OF the world we live on
that na has has not ct been explored by geographers
TO investigate Is on the African continent.
| And yet the fact is that about 100000
a terra .incognita, one-tenth OF which is on
| America.
The Cosmos. published in Paris, has an
article on this subject which gives syn
opsis OF an address by Mr.. Looley before
the the, london geographical congress last
question very clearly.
| Mr.. Lobley reminds us that in the first
place, toward the middle of the sixteenth
century all seas had been traversed by
navigators, and that If the maps of the
continents were not yet very exact at
least their relative positions and their gen.
itself appears on a French map of 15io un-
der the name of Great Java. In the course
Of the sixty years included in the last de,
half of the sixteenth group of navigators
had advanced geographic knowledge in a
degree that has never been reached In any
had made his first voyage around the
| world; Vasco De Cana had doubled the
Cape . Of Good Hope chrstopher Columbus COLI
the voyages Of Cabot and Magellan had
| completed this wonderful list OF new dis
coveries.
To-day outside Of the polar regions. We
must confess that all the seas nave been
explored. but this is far from being the
case with the land. An immense extent is
entirely unknown to us; another, still more
considerable. has been only imperfectly ex-
plored; travellers have Travelled 1t, COM
merce has exploited some of its products,
but good maps OF it do not exist Finally.
only the least part is we'll known: geodesy
has covered it with network Of triangles.
and the maps of 1t are complete even from
Typographical standpoint.
After the two polar regions. which have
remained inaccessible, Africa is the part
OF the world of which We have the least
information. Notwithstanding the general
scramble among European nations to di-
only a vague idea of what the continent
contains, over 650O,00O square miles being
yet uneXplored.
After Africa, Australia offers the vastest
must remember that even its seacoast was
not fully explored till 1S43. Since that
time, at the price of great suffering, 1t has
been crossed from south to north, but no
traveller has yet traverSed 1t from east to
west.
While the North American continent has
been very well explored, the whole central
region Of the southern continent has not
been mapped with any degree of accuracy.
Some portions of it have been roamed over
by men hunting for wood. mines and arti-
cles Of commerce. but very little is known
of the interior of the continent.
To sum up. the yet unexplored parts of
the globe cover an area of about 80 000, 900
square kilometers (about 2O.0OO0O0 square
miles,. approximately divided thus:
Africa. ......................... 6.5OO.OoO
Australia =. =. Observation-Disclosures. 100000
America =. :. ........................ 1000 900
Asia Observation-Disclosures. 100000
Islands $500. .......................... 100000
Arctic regions =. =. .................. $780, 900
Antarctic regions 80. 80. ........... 900
Total :. :. 20. 900 900