Chapter I
Pioneer Fields of Discovery
The geographical explorer seeks not merely new or wonderful things; indeed his main object is not that at all. If he steers a course to distant lands it is because he wishes first of all to make discoveries, whether these are wonderful or not, out be- yond the realm of accustomed life, or as Colonel Roosevelt put it, “beyond the rim of the known world."”” Real exploration can also be done in one’s own garden, as Darwin demonstrated in his classic study of earthworms. Agassiz, walking over the rounded New England hills and drift-strewn valleys, discov- ered the fact of continental glaciation in a vanished Ice Age, where others still speculated about the Noaic deluge. He said simply, “If this were in Switzerland I should say the ice had been here.”’ Before he came to New England he had ‘“‘ex- plored” the fish collections of Cuvier at Paris. Whatever he did was noteworthy because it was related to the discovery or exploration of a moving idea. The adventure and sport of ex- ploration are but a fleeting record compared with contributions to knowledge, for they are the incidents on the way and not the goal of exploratory research.
It has become the fashion to say that major exploration is at an end because the North Pole and the South Pole have been attained and the general design of the mountains, deserts, and drainage systems of the earth has become known. Yet in truth the map is still crowded with scientific mysteries though its great historic mysteries have been swept away. The Mountains of the Moon, the sources of the Nile and the Congo, the secrets of the inner Sahara, the heart of Tibet, these are among the great mysteries that long awaited the explorer and that have been dispelled one by one.
Has the age of discovery ended with these exploits? Before we can answer that question we must know what constitutes a
discovery. It is undoubtedly an achievement to fill in a blank
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