that would thus be established, would be of incalculable benefit to both in the prosecution of this important scientific labor.
If we turn to the adjoining continent of Asia, there is still open a large field for Geographic research. Peopled as it has been, largely by semi-civilized races for many centuries, we might have expected that the book of nature that might be opened would long since have been spread before us; but the exclusiveness of this semi-civilization has been a stumbling-block, until it may be said that the wise men of her nations have lived only that the masses should not learn. Of the Political Geography of this great region we have a fair conception, and of the Physical conditions it may be said we know them generally. Enlightened men have been hammering at the borders with the powerful support of progressive nations, and a few have even passed the confines of exclusiveness and brought back to us marvellous tales of ancient grandeur. Men have sought disguise that they might tread on the forbidden ground, and many have lost their lives in efforts to gain the secrets that have been so persistently guarded. But the march of civilization is not to be thwarted by the semi-barbarous; they may yet impede it, as they have in the past, but it can be only for a time; the impulse is sure to come, when the thirst for knowledge and power by the antagonistic races will sweep all barriers before it, however strong. The contemplated railway across the continent to Vladivostock may be the culminating step in overcoming these refractory peoples and opening their territories to the march of progress. We have seen on our own continent the potent influence of these iron ways, and it is not too much to believe that even in the strange surroundings of the Orient they, will exercise a power against which exclusiveness and superstition will be forced to give way.
In Africa we find still different conditions. A great continent believed to contain immense resources, but peopled with dark-hued native races, barbarous in their tendencies, and frequently deficient in intellect, and yet withal showing at times a savage grandeur that excites the admiration of the man, while it attracts the interest of the student. We may recall Carthage and Alexandria, and all the wonders of ancient Egypt that live to the confusion of our own day, while those who patterned them have been lost beyond the bounds of even the most ancient history and look with trembling awe upon the degradation that has followed, the boundless dissipation of the learning of ages, until we are left
