The Threshold of the Unknown Region

Abstract

HE must be a sorry story-teller who manages to make a traveller's tale uninteresting, especially if the traveller be a voyager, and still more if his voyages have led him into unknown regions. Of all forms of narrative we think it will be generally acknowledged that narratives of discovery are by far the most popular, as is testified by the abundance of this kind of literature, historical and fictitious, provided for the delectation of the young. No doubt this may be largely accounted for by the fact that a discoverer of new lands is continually unveiling the unknown to those who listen to his tale, thereby appealing to one of the strongest and most fruitful characteristics of the human mind, that of curiosity. Every step taken by a discoverer, every knot sailed by his “good ship,” we know will lead him among ifresh wonders. Once upon a time the Unknown Region—that is, the region unknown to those peoples who have had a thirst for knowledge to any fruitful extent-was in sooth wide enough, when first our Aryan forefathers left their eastern home, and had “all the world before them where to choose.” Even four centuries ago the greater part of the earth waited the coming of the European descendants of those primitive discoverers who first turned their faces eagerly and inquisitively to the unknown west. But ever since then the boundary of the Unknown Region has been gradually pushed farther and farther back, until now there remains comparatively little to be found out in order to enable geographers to complete the configuration of the lands of the globe. The extent of our dwelling-place is now pretty well known, though there is yet abundance of work for many generations of explorers ere the contents of land and water be anything like fully disclosed.

The Threshold of the Unknown Region.

By Clements R. Markham, Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, formerly of H.M. Arctic ship Assistance. (London: Sampson Low and Co., 1873).