Geocentrism

“ All else is a wide domain of ocean broken only where tapering and isolated tongues of land, South America, the Cape, Australia, lean down from the great land masses of the north. On the other hand, all the great land masses expand in the Northern Hemisphere, and shoulder one another round the North Pole. America is separated from Asia only by the shallowest and narrowest of straits; an elevation of a few fathoms would unite Greenland with Europe. Science points definitely to some part of the great northern land area as the centre of life for at least the larger terrestrial forms of [141] life. ”

“ To us north and south, east and west are of equal interest and importance. Our desire now is to understand, if haply we may, the complex system of which we ourselves form a part. The distribution of land and water—the configuration of continental areas and oceanic basins—the circulation of oceanic and terrestrial waters—earth-movements and volcanoes—ice-formations—the atmosphere—climatology—the geographical distribution of plants and animals—in a word, the world as one organic whole now forms the subject of our contemplation. ”

“ THE ARCTIC REGIONS
The history of the Polar Regions, of those vast areas, difficult of access, which include millions of square miles of land and ocean at either extreme of our planet, is of surpassing interest and importance. It is not only that we here meet with examples of heroism and devotion which must entrance mankind for all time. It is not only that there are dangers to be encountered and difficulties to be overcome which call forth the best qualities of our race. These, no doubt, are the main reasons for the deep interest which polar exploration has always excited. ”

“ In history, the question of territory,—by which is meant mere area in contrast to specific geographic conditions—has constantly come to the front, because a state obviously involved land and boundaries, and assumed as its chief function the defence and extension of these. Therefore political geography developed early as an offshoot of history. Political science has often formulated its principles without regard to the geographic conditions of states, but as a matter of fact, the most fruitful political policies of nations have almost invariably had a geographic core. ”

“ The continents are never to be regarded as high, dead masses of land, but as vital and effective instruments, working upon each other ceaselessly, and helping each other to attain the consummation intended in the counsels of the Divine Mind. The unity of the earth, the unity of the continents, the unity of every physical feature of the continents, and the building all up together in a perfect symmetry and mutual adaptation of parts, is the crowning thought of Geographical Science. ”

“ This depends primarily upon the articulation of a land-mass, whether it presents an unbroken contour like Africa and India, or whether, like Europe and Norway, it drops a fringe of peninsulas and a shower of islands into the bordering ocean. Mere distance from the sea bars a country from its vivifying contact; every protrusion of an ocean artery into the heart of a continent makes that heart feel the pulse of life on far-off, unseen shores. ”

“ In continents and countries the anthropo-geographer looks to see not what reliefs are present, but how they are distributed; whether highlands and lowlands appear in unbroken masses as in Asia, or alternate in close succession as in western Europe; whether the transition from one to the other is abrupt as in western South America, or gradual as in the United States. A simple and massive land structure lends the same trait of the simple and massive to every kind of historical movement, because it collects the people into large groups and starts them moving in broad streams, as it were. ”

“ But as continents, as large as the spaces supposed to have subsided, have been raised above the level of the sea,—as whole regions are now rising, for instance, in Scandinavia and South America,—and as no reason can be assigned, why subsidences should not have occurred in some parts of the earth’s crust on as great a scale both in extent and amount as those of elevation, objections of this nature strike me as of little force. ”

“ If on a map of the world a broad inked brush be swept seawards round Africa, passing into the Mediterranean, round North and South America, round India, then continuously south of Java and round Australia south of Tasmania and northward to the tropic, this broad band will represent the encircling ribbon-like “deep,” which gives strength to the suggestion that the continents in their main features are permanent forms and that their structural connexion with the oceans is not temporary and accidental. ”

“ Do not Kamtchatka and Korea, Arabia and the Indian Peninsula all point south? South America, Africa, and Australia are drawn out into wedges narrowing southwards. They are like stalactites in a grotto. But however much you may puzzle over the globe, and however much you may question learned men, you will never know why the earth's surface has assumed exactly the form it has and no other.
On another occasion you may remark that Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia lie in an almost continuous curve in the eastern hemisphere, while America has the western hemisphere all to itself. ”

“ Let us suppose that the continent which is to succeed our land is at present beginning to appear above the water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean; it must be evident that the materials of this great body, which is formed and ready to be brought forth, must have been collected from the destruction of an earth which does not now appear. ”

“ Though the geographer for convenience’ sake recognizes three separate continents in the Old World—Europe, Asia and Africa—yet these form practically one land mass, which in its turn approaches America very nearly at Bering Straits, and, less nearly, in the North Atlantic through the intervention of the British Isles, the Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland, etc. The centre of this land mass lies in Europe, a point not without its importance. ”

“ The great land division, embracing both the old and the new worlds, reaches to about 80° N. lat., and the extreme points come even yet nearer to the Pole. The distances of one body from another, as, for instance, from Greenland to Iceland, are very small, in comparison with the immense spaces which divide the southern points of the continent, where the hundreds of miles of separation at the north expand into thousands. Expansion of the land-mass is the law at the north, contraction at the south. ”

“ Now, if we examine the globe, to see how much of this zone is land and how much water, we shall find, commencing with China and coming over Asia, the broad part of Africa, and so on, across the continent of America to the Pacific, land enough to fill up, as nearly as may be, just one-third of it. ”

“ The Atlantic face of the Americas formed therefore the drowsy unstirred Orient of the inhabited world, which westward developed growing activity—dreaming a civilization in Mexico and Peru, roused to artistic and maritime achievement in Oceanica and the Malay Archipelago, to permanent state-making and real cultural development in Asia, and attaining the highest civilization at last in western Europe. There was the sunset margin of the inhabited world, the area of achievement, the adult Occident, facing across the dividing ocean that infant Orient beyond. ”

“ The whole region of the extra-tropical Old World that is included within the ranges marked, is the region which has most land to windward of it in the southern hemisphere. Now it is a curious coincidence, at least, that all the great extra-tropical deserts of the earth, with those regions in Europe and Asia which have the least amount of precipitation upon them, should lie within this range. ”

“ Here, therefore, in the operations of water upon the surface of the earth, we are to look for effects proportioned to the cause.
Let us cast our eye upon the southern continent of the new world; there is not, from the one end to the other, any great river that flows to the sea upon the west side. A ridge of mountains, at no great distance from the coast, divides the water of this continent; a small part runs to the west; the most part runs to the east; and forms a country which, for fertile plains and navigable rivers, has not its equal upon the globe. ”

“ Yet although the terrestrial areas varied much from age to age in their extent and in their distribution, being at one time more continental, at another more insular, there is reason to believe that these successive diminutions and expansions have on the whole been effected within, or not far outside, the limits of the existing continents. There is no evidence that any portion of the present land ever lay under the deeper parts of the ocean. ”

“ One might naturally wish to see the region of such an aggregation of frontiers, where boundaries run like contour-lines on a topographic map—the wavering, imaginary lines upon the earth's Asiatic surface, for which, and to which, literally, millions of lives have been sacrificed—expressions of an "idea" for which many more lives must be given. ”

“ From what regions of the continent the future wealth is to be derived we cannot predict. The uncertainty is, perhaps, the consideration in the problem of development that leaves vast areas with undefined boundaries, though nominally within the sphere of influence of a specified power. There are fully 2,000,000 square miles yet to be explored before we may know the general geographic features of the continent, and a much larger area that must be examined and studied by experts before any reasonable estimate of its value and adaptability to the schemes of civilized man can be approached. ”

“ What inequalities in the surface? but upon a minute and attentive observation we shall find the greatest chain of mountains are nearer the equator than the poles; that in the Old Continent their direction is more from the east to west than from the north to south; and that, on the contrary, in the New World they extend more from north to south than from east to west ”

“ For this reason the American continent offers facilities to the geologist denied to him in the so-called Old World, where the earlier deposits are comparatively hidden, and the broken character of the land, intersected by mountains in every direction, renders his investigation still more difficult. Of course, when I speak of the geological deposits as so completely unveiled to us here, I do not forget the sheet of drift which covers the continent from North to South, and which we shall discuss hereafter, when I reach that part of my subject. ”

“ We are now very near the [Pg 143] center of the Oscan ocean. East of us is the continent of Atlan. So, a zone, extending through the zenith along the line on which we are moving will pass through the equatorial belt, and give you a clear concept of the great centers of population and material improvement. This is the most important part of the world for you to study for the present, and until you learn the language and mingle with the people, you must depend upon your eyes as the chief source of information. ”

“ The Tertiary System forms the last great subdivision of the rocky strata of the earth—the last in the creative, as well as geographical, distribution of organic and inorganic matter—antecedent to the human epoch. All the European and partly Asiatic chains of mountains were again farther elevated toward the close of the preceding period. Europe itself assumed a more distinctive shape and contour, a bolder coast-line, higher plateaux, deeper and more extensive lakes. ”

“ This Unknown Region comprises an area of 2,500,000 square miles; an immense portion of the terrestrial surface to be shut out from the knowledge of Civilized Man. Its further exploration, if practicable, cannot but be rich in valuable results. Not only would it furnish the shortest route from the West to the East, from progressive Europe to conservative Asia, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but it could not fail to add in a very important degree to our stores of scientific information. ”

“ Ptolemy’s work on physical features was on the whole poor, and he neglected the human side of geography. Discarding the idea of the circumfluent ocean,32 he supposed the extension of unknown lands northward in Europe, eastward in Asia, and southward in Africa, beyond the limits in which he attempted to portray their outlines; and he even suggested a land connection between south-eastern Asia and southern Africa. ”

“ A simple continental structure gives to those movements a few simple features and a wide monotonous distribution which checks differentiation. A manifold, complex build, varied in relief and ragged in contour, breaks up the moving streams of peoples, turns each branch into a different channel, lends it a distinctive character through isolation, finally brings it up in a cul de sac formed by a peninsula or mountain-rimmed basin, where further movement is checked and the process of local individualization begins. ”

“ In contradistinction to continental and intercontinental location, anthropo-geography recognizes two other narrower meanings of the term. The innate mobility of the human race, due primarily to the eternal food-quest and increase of numbers, leads a people to spread out over a territory till they reach the barriers which nature has set up, or meet the frontiers of other tribes and nations. Their habitat or their specific geographic location is thus defined by natural features of mountain, desert and sea, or by the neighbors whom they are unable to displace, or more often by both. ”