The Marietta journal. [volume] (Marietta, Ga.) 1866-1909, 1896-10-29
OUR UNEMPLOYED GLOBE.
There Are Twenty Million square Niles
of the Iarth Yet to Ia E-nInrca

There Are Twenty Million Square Niles
of the Earth Yet to Es Explored.
We are apt to think that we mod
ems have very little to do in the
way of exploring the globe and that
the recent explorations in Africa
have quite put the finishing touch
to geographical knowledge, so that
he who wishes to set foot on virgin
soil must sigh, Ike Alexander, for
another world. Those who entertain
such opinions may calm themselves
with the thought that no less por-
ton of the earth's surface than 90.
000,0 square miles is yet fit sub
ject for investigation, and on a large
part of this the foot of civilized man
has not yet trod We translate from
the Paris Cosmos" an article that
brings this fact out very clearly. 1t
runs as follows:
"At the London geographical con-
gress Mr.. Logan Lobby gave a very
interesting study of the present state
of exploration of the globe. 1t ap-
pears that modern geographers have
an immense amount of labor before
them to make us acquainted with
all parts of the earth. This conclu-
sion will astor1ish some people, for
there is q general impression that
| almost all regions of the earth are
we'll explored.
Mr.. Lobby 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
general conflgurat;on were known.
Australia itself appears on French
map OF 1542 undor the name of
Great Java. In the course of the 60
years included in the last decade of
the fifteenth century and the first
half of the sixteenth pleiad of nav
lgators had advanced geographic
knowledge in a degree that has never
been reached in any other period so
short. Sebastian d'Elano had made
his first voyage around the world;
Vasco da Cana had doubled the
Cape of Good Hope; Christopher Co.
lumbus had added the two Americas
to the map; the voyages of Cabot and
OF Magellan had completed this Won
derful list of new discoveries.
To-day, outside of the polar re-
gions, we must confess that all the
seas have 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 imper-
fectly explored; travellers have trav-
ersed it, commerce has exploited
some of it's products, but good maps
of it do not exist. Finally, only the
least part is we'll known; geodesy
has covered it with o network of
triangles, and the maps of it are COM
plete, even from a Typographical
standpoint.
After the arctic and antarctic
regions, which have remained inac-
cessible up to the present time, AT.
RIGA is the part of the world that is
least known to US, Notwithstanding
the admirable explorations made in
this century, which are daily clear
ing up the map. The earliest explor-
ers, however, could not dream of
serious efforts, and many years will
pass before the country will be thor
oughly explored.
After Africa, Australia offers the
vastest field to the investigation of
explorers. Wem must remember that
even its seacoast was not fully ex-
plored till 1S43. Since that time, at
the price of great suffering, it has
been crossed from south to north,
but no traveller has yet traversed it
from east to west.
I'm the two Americas, except the
extreme northern and southern
parts, the continent is known. Never
theless, the whole central region of
South America, though in great part
explored for commercial purposes
(for mines, woods, caoutchouc, etc.
is not exactly mapped.
ITO sum up, tho yet unexplored
, parts Of the globe cover an area of
about $4,000, 900 square kilometers
(about 20, 100000 square miles), ap-
proximately divided thus: