The Globe

“ Of course, the world, we, civilization, will turn back to this wondrous region some day, when we have settled the West; for the mouth of the mightiest river on the globe is a fact; it is the mouth by which this young nation was trained in its younger days, and we cannot ignore it in the end, however willing we may be to do so now. ”

“ The configuration of the different portions of the globe, with the varieties of climate, the relations of mountain and plain, of land and water, have strongly affected the character of nations and the currents of history. ”

“ Are the opposite extremities of the globe our native place, because they are a part of that geographical and political denomination, our country? Does natural affection expand in circles of latitude and longitude? ”

“ Here is our globe, with its inhabitants, with its great continents, with its oceans, with its empires, its kingdoms, with its arts, its commerce, its literature, its sciences, and yet it would seem that all these things are absolutely unknown to any inhabitants that may exist elsewhere. ”

“ A new, pleasing, and concise description of the five great divisions of the globe: the empires, kingdoms, and states, into which they are divided; and the natural, mineral, and vegetable productions of the several countries; with the numbers, and the manners and customs of their inhabitants.
New edition, corrected, 1s. 6d. bound in cloth;—or, with Seven Glyphographic Maps, and the use of the globes, 2s. bound. ”

“ It is useful to know the division of the globe into continents and oceans, islands and lakes, mountains and rivers—and this knowledge the text-books contain; but it is a higher learning to understand the effect of this division upon climate, soil and natural productions—upon the character and pursuits of the human race. ”

“ Of course, all of us learn geography and history. We must know the geography of the leading countries of the globe, and we must have some knowledge of their inhabitants and of their government, their resources and their civilization. It would seem shockingly ignorant not to know something about China, or not to have some ideas on the subject of India or Egypt. The discovery of the New World also involves matters on which every boy and girl has to be instructed. ”

“ In the course of our previous studies we had been at some pains to tell them about the big world outside, to draw sketches, maps, to make a globe, even, out of a spherical fruit, and show the size and relation of the countries, and to tell of the numbers of their people. ”

“ Nations, in their separation from their original stocks, and dispersion over the globe, are yet held together by the leading traits, physical and intellectual, which had characterized them as groups. And in spreading abroad, they are found to have left behind them a golden clue, which we recognize in physiology, languages, arts, monuments, and mental habitudes. ”

“ The globe for the first time began to assume its true character and size in the minds of men, and the minds of men began soon to grasp and utilize the results of this circumnavigation for the enlargement of trade and commerce, and for the benefit of geography, astronomy, mathematics, and the other sciences. ”

“ Pleasures more immediately incidental to geographical discovery—those pleasures which eager and enterprising minds must experience, however severe the labour involved, on traversing portions of the globe previously unknown to civilised mankind—commenced after the head of the Great Bight was passed. ”

“ The facts appear in the same perspective if we consider the population of the Globe. More than fourteen-sixteenths of all humanity live on the Great Continent, and nearly one-sixteenth more on the closely off-set Islands of Britain and Japan. ”

“ I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day exhibited, I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless around me myriads of other globes. ”

“ Letty's Globe.
"Letty's Globe" gives us the picture of a little golden-haired girl who covers all Europe with her dainty hands and tresses while giving a kiss to England, her own dear native land. (1808-79.) ”

“ A globe far off It seemed, now seems a boundless continent Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of Night Starless exposed, and ever-threatening storms Of Chaos blustering round, inclement sky; ”

“ To England they soon turned, and contemplated the round, many-colored globe of Shakspeare's works. As playful swallows sometimes dart round and round a lithe and wondering wingless animal, so they, admiringly and timidly, attracted, yet hesitating, delighting in his alertness, but not quite understanding it, flitted like a troubled and beautiful flock around the great magician of modern civilization. ”

“ In some cities whole streets are unpeopled by the news I brought; workmen have left the workshops, judges the judgment-seat, merchants their bales, women their homes.
"'Why toil any more,' they say, 'for the low ambitions of this mere peak of rock? Why heap up its cockle-shells of wealth? Around us is the Continent, the Main Land of our true life; before us is our Home. For the moment we are poised here, like birds of passage on a sea-girt rock ”

“ Religion and labor begot that spirit which has tamed the continent, cheered it with churches and schools, set the busy spindles humming and the shuttles flying, plunged into the earth and into the sea, run over the prairies, talking by lightning from the Atlantic to the Pacific, until the whole land where men are intelligent, industrious, and free, seems singing and smiling at its daily work. ”

“ For on that day men from Europe, then the centre of civilization, first gazed on a rich new land beyond the seas, a great virgin continent, destined to become the seat of flourishing civilizations and to play a leading part in the later history of the world. ”

“ I have never understood it, how twenty million men and women out of that one common colossal daily vision of a world, almost in a day, almost in an hour, across a continent as on some great national spring, snapped back into the little life. ”

“ You have subdued a continent, and it stands in the daylight radiant with a material splendor of which the Pilgrims never dreamed. Yet a continent as dark, as unknown, exists. It is yourselves, your future, your national life. ”

“ Here was an authentic account of a vast nation, potent and populous, exhibiting an elaborate social polity, well advanced in the arts of civilisation, occupying a soil that teemed with mineral treasures and with a boundless variety of vegetable products, stores of wealth, both natural and artificial, that seemed, for the first time, to realise the golden dreams in which the great discoverer of the New World had so fondly, and in his own day so fallaciously, indulged. ”

“ In the first fervent joy of the discovery of that great Continent of life lying close around them unseen, nothing seemed worth doing but either to tell every one of it, or themselves to watch if perchance some glimpses of it might be vouchsafed to their own eager gaze. ”

“ Eventually, however, I succeeded in scaling one of the highest peaks. Here my feelings almost overcame me. There stretched far and wide in front an extensive, and, to all appearances, a populous country. There was no mistaking the fact now. Here was a new continent and a new civilization, the one all but unknown to the rest of humanity, the other independent in its origin. ”

“ This is America!” And so it is. The true life of the New World is not to be seen in great cities, with great palaces and dirty alleys, but in the abundance of its small communities, of its beautiful private dwellings, with their encircling fields and groves, in the bosom of grand scenery, by the sides of vigorous rivers, with mountains and forests, and all appliances for a vigorous and affluent life. ”

“ Each foot of the ocean's surface has, in its fluidity or density or position, something of the quality or power of every drop of water which rests or moves in the depths of the sea. What is called national character is the face of the great society beneath; and, as that society in its elements is elevated or debased, so will the national character rise or fall in the estimation of all just men, and upon the page [Pg 92] of impartial history. ”

“ In addition to its vast importance in regard to social life, and the art of government, Geography unfolds to us the celestial phenomena, acquaints us [Pg 2] with the occupants of the land and ocean, and the vegetation, fruits, and peculiarities of the various quarters of the earth, a knowledge of which marks him who cultivates it as a man earnest in the great problem of life and happiness. ”

“ In our physical geography we shall read marvelous stories that outrival the romances of Dumas and Hugo. And geography as a whole will reveal herself as the cherishing mother of us all, providing us with food, and drink, and shelter, and raiment, giving us poetry, and song, and story, and weaving golden fancies for the fabric of our daily dreams. ”

“ The art of this land—or these lands, if you like—should be so considered; not as an interesting and even stimulating by-product of social, industrial, and political evolution, with only an accidental relationship to them, and only an empirical interest for the men of to-day, but as the most perfect material expression of the great{14} reality that existed through and by these agencies that were in themselves nothing; the character that emerged through the turmoil of human activity, as it shows itself in the men and women of the time, and expresses itself in their art. ”

“ Dollarson:
Why continue with this litany of names? They merely indicate the economic, political, social and intellectual importance which the whole world attaches to the New Continent, and what great hopes are associated with its future. That is why it is called the Land of Hopes. ”

“ The great cosmopolitan idea of the human race and its unity of interests is born of geography, and even the smattering of it which the poorly taught pupil gets enwraps this great general idea, which is fertile and productive, a veritable knowledge of power from the start. ”

“ Truly we live in a world rich in wonder, variety, and mystery. During Geography Awareness Week, 1988, we can resolve to share more of these qualities with our children and to encourage them in their understanding of the social, economic, and political influence of geographic issues and conditions. ”

“ The national character will be changed, and this hospitable continent, no longer the prosperous home of the poor and friendless, thronging from the Old World, will become a repulsive scene of confusion and strife, while “each new day a gash is added to her wounds.” ”

“ It is the literature, the art, and the science of a country which make it known to other lands; and we shall have neither of these in adequate development until much more of the work is done of smoothing off this rough continent, and educating the people that come to us, at the rate of a cityful a month, from the continent over the sea. ”

“ Mountains, plains, squatters’ shanties, replicas of foreign palaces, cowboys, Indians, ranchers, New Yorkers, Londoners. The free open-air life and altitude of the plains, the sheltered luxurious manners and customs of the idle rich! Across the warp of Western characteristics is woven the woof of a cosmopolitan society. ”

“ I concerned myself with getting, first, a clear impression of the physical body in which each country clothed itself,—the aspect of town and countryside, villages, farms, working-class quarters, factories, suburbs, plans of towns, styles of architecture, characteristic types and ways of living, of modern Europe; and, second, the attitudes, social and political, of various classes, the social psychology of the different peoples. Such acquisitions had, of course, to be the merest impressions. One could not get “data”; one’s tour could be little more than a perpetual “sizing-up.” ”

“ Thou hast now fallen on the clue of an important mystery, Ensign Dudley. This continent was created with a design. The fact is apparent by its riches, its climate, its magnitude, its facilities of navigation, and chiefly in that it hath been left undiscovered until the advanced condition of society hath given opportunity and encouragement to men of a certain degree of merit, to adventure in its behalf. ”

“ We find this continent prosperous, the climate salubrious and delightful, the inhabitants genial and courteous, the government equitable and just. Shall we entertain any other thought and feeling than that of love for you? ”

“ I have heard it remarked, that the characteristic of the speeches of the New World, which distinguishes them from those of Europe, is that they embrace a much larger extent of subject, and take much broader views, and generally aim at comprehending the whole past, present and future, and the whole of the human race. ”

“ When you will see the great continent of Europe convulsed from one end to the other, and yourself no longer in the position to influence the course of events, and guide the popular will, you will bitterly regret this step.' But I know myself better. ”

“ Our experiment on this continent was intended to be something more than the creation of a nation on the old pattern, that should become big and strong, and rich and luxurious, divided into classes of the very wealthy and the very poor, of the enlightened and the illiterate. ”

“ While geography emphasizes the physical side and history the social, these are only emphases in a common topic, namely, the associated life of men. For this associated life, with its experiments, its ways and means, its achievements and failures, does not go on in the sky nor yet in a vacuum. It takes place on the earth. ”

“ This sentiment, now fondly cherished by more than ten millions of people, will be transmitted, with unabated vigor, down the tide of time, through the countless millions who are destined to inhabit this continent, to the latest posterity. ”

“ For instance, in grounding the young idea in the geography of any particular country, the main points of its history should follow as a natural sequence. Its seas and rivers would lead to the consideration of commerce and the polity of nations:—the mention of its towns, suggest the names of its great men in literature and art. ”