Abstract
DURING the past half-century marked advances have been made in all the departments now included under the head of Geography, which has to deal with certain problems dependent on the constitution, configuration, and distribution of the surface features of the earth. In attempting to take stock of the results of the exploration of the unknown and little-known regions of the globe during this period, I think it is safe to say that we have to go back to the half-century which followed 1492 (when Columbus stumbled upon a New World) before we find a period so prolific. The two Poles have been reached and large additions made to our knowledge of the deep island-girt ocean which covers the Arctic basin, and to the vast ice-bound, mountainous continent near the centre of which the South Pole is located. The unknown two-thirds of the no longer “Dark Continent” have been more or less provisionally charted, and all but an insignificant fraction partitioned among the Powers of Europe. Great areas of North America have been surveyed, charted, and occupied, while much has been done for the exploration of Central and South America. The map of Asia has, to a large extent, been reconstructed, while the vast unknown interior of Australia has been traversed in all directions. Even much of Europe has been re-surveyed. A new department essentially geographical—oceanography—has been created as the result of the Challenger and other oceanic surveys.
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KELTIE, J. Progress of Geography. Nature 104, 249–250 (1919). https://doi.org/10.1038/104249a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/104249a0