THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Exploration.—The progress of geographical discovery by ploration and by research entered on a new phase with the teenth century. Instruments for fixing position had been perfected, the sextant was handier and more accurate than the old quadrant, the chronometer, first used on Cook's second voyage, made good determinations of longitude possible at last, the institution of the "Nautical Almanac" with resultant improvements in the art of navigation and the amelioration of life on shipboard had banished the fear of scurvy. Most of all, the introduction of steam power speeded up and gave certainty to ocean travel, and tropical hygiene made life safe on land. Submarine cables facilitated the exact fixing of the position of important bases and photography replaced the labour of the artists carried on the earlier expeditions.
The first society devoted exclusively to geographical discovery was the African Association which was founded in London in 1788, and passed on its functions to the Royal Geographical Society, which was established in 1830, with a world-wide outlook and had a roll of 6,000 fellows in 1928. There are nearly one hundred geographical societies scattered over the countries of the world, their function being to advance geography by encouraging and rewarding explorers and investigators, publishing the results of their work, and maintaining the public interest in all that con cerns geography. (See GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETIES.) Exploration in the 19th century can only be sketched in the most general way by referring to a few outstanding explorers amongst the hundreds who did sound and distinguished work. Sir John Ross in 1818 reached the mouth of Smith Sound beyond Baffin bay and seeking a north-west passage, his nephew James Clark Ross reached the North Magnetic Pole in Boothia peninsula in 1831.
Sir John Franklin set out in 1845, lured by the fatal fascination of the Passage, and when he failed to return there set in the rush of Arctic exploration known as the Franklin search. Out of much that was weak, foolish and incompetent in direction there arose in execution heroes and geniuses like Sir Leopold McClintock who developed the method of man-hauled sledging and shone amongst those who explored the coasts and channels of the Arctic archi pelago. Americans vied with British in the search and a high place must be given to Elisha Kent Kane who in 1853 pushed through Smith Sound and some of his parties reached 8o° N. In 1872 Weyprecht and Payer on an Austrian expedition discovered Franz Josef Land. In 1875-77 the last of the old fashioned British naval polar expeditions in two ships with hundreds of men was sent out under Sir George Nares to reach the North Pole. It failed to get through Smith Sound but Albert H. Markham in a sledge journey pushed on to 83° 20' N. In 1878 Baron A. E. Nordenskjold in the Swedish ship "Vega" made the long sought North-East Passage along the coast of Siberia and circumnavigated Europe and Asia. In 1882 a series of circumpolar stations for scientific observations was set up by international agreement ; the honour of occupying the most northerly point fell to the American expedition under A. W. Greely and from his base Lockwood got to 83° 24' N. Fridtjof Nansen in 1888 crossed the interior of Greenland for the first time and by travelling on ski and invent ing new devices for camping and cooking revolutionised polar travel. Five years later by a still more daring and original plan he drifted in the "Fram" across the Arctic Sea and got to 86° 28' N. In 1903-1905 Roald Amundsen, another Norwegian, in the "Gjoa" was the first to carry a ship through the half-forgotten North West Passage. Invaluable work has been done by American, Italian, British and especially by Danish explorers including Mylius Erichsen, Knud Rasmussen and Lange Koch in northern Greenland, and the labours of the American Robert E. Peary in a series of approximations carried on with infinite skill and patience from 1886 onwards at last brought him in 1909 the honour of attaining the North Pole.
The Antarctic regions were explored for the last time with sailing ships in 1838-43 when a French expedition under Dumont D'Urville discovered Adelie Land south of Australia, an American expedition under Charles Wilkes coasted the pack-ice surrounding the Antarctic continent for 2,000 miles, and a British expedition under James Clark Ross, elaborately equipped for magnetic ob servations, broke through the girdle of pack-ice for the first time and discovered the south running coast of Victoria Land, Mounts Erebus and Terror in 78° S. and the Great Ice Barrier. The Antarctic seas remained unvisited, except for a southward dash by the "Challenger" in 1874, until Scottish and Norwegian whalers went in search of new whaling grounds in 1892-95. Scientific ex peditions equipped mainly by private enterprise under the in spiration of the International Geographical Congress of 1895 went out from Belgium under Gerlache in 1897, spending the Antarctic night for the first time drifting in the pack-ice south of South America, and from London under Borchgrevink in the "Southern Cross" spending the winter upon the Antarctic continent for the first time in 1898-99. These were succeeded by four simultaneous purely scientific expeditions in 1901-04, the British national ex pedition in the "Discovery" under Robert F. Scott of the British Royal navy initiating Antarctic sledging, taking advantage of Nansen's methods, and penetrating far into the frozen continent. The German expedition under Erich v. Drygalski in the "Gauss," the Swedish expedition under Otto Nordenskjold in the Antarctic and the private Scottish National Expedition under William Bruce in the "Scotia" were all commanded by men of science, and did much valuable scientific work.
In 1907-08 Ernest H. Shackleton in a private expedition in the "Nimrod" succeeded by the innovation of using ponies for trans port in getting to within 97 geographical miles of the South Pole and turned only because his provisions were exhausted, while other parties climbed Mount Erebus and reached the Magnetic Pole. In 1912 Scott in the great "Terra Nova" expedition suc ceeded in reaching the Pole by Shackleton's route only to find that he had been anticipated by a month by Roald Amundsen who had made a dash on ski with dog-sledges from a more easterly base. Meanwhile an Australian expedition under Douglas Mawson, with J. K. Davis in command of the "Aurora" explored a great stretch of coast from King George Land to Queen Mary Land and pene trated far into the icy interior.
In Asia three great regions remained practically unexplored well into the nineteenth century, viz., Arabia, the mountains and tablelands north and east of India and the deserts of Central Asia beyond them. The northern half of Arabia was traversed in many directions by European travellers prominent amongst them Palgrave in the middle of the century followed by C. Doughty, W. Blunt, C. Huber and others, by T. E. Lawrence during the World War and later by Gertrude Bell. To the north of India the great effort was to penetrate the Himalayas and explore Tibet. Most of the work was done by officers of the survey of India like Everest, the two Stracheys and Godwin Austen. Private explorers also had their part, foremost among them the French missionaries Huc and Gabet in 1844--46, who reached Lhasa from China, the great botanist Joseph D. Hooker who explored Sikkim in 1848 49; mountaineers including the three brothers Schlagentweit in W. M. Conway, Douglas Freshfield, the Duke of the Abruzzi, F. de Filippi, Dr. and Mrs. Workman, and finally the Mt. Everest expedition of 1926, members of which possibly reached the summit of the loftiest mountain of the earth. Officers of the Indian army and civilians of the Indian service have spent much spare time in expeditions into and across the mountains and so have big game hunters like St. George Littledale in 1894-95, and scholars like W. W. Rockhill in 1889-91. In earlier years native surveyors made some important journeys in Tibet, at that time practically inaccessible to Europeans. The last of the great prob lems of Asiatic geography to be solved was the complex of moun tain ranges and river-valleys between India and China involving the middle course of the Brahmaputra which was finally settled by Rawlings and Bailey in 1914.
In Central Asia north of the great plateau Russian travellers visited the Khanates of Bokhara and Samarkand and many scien tific expeditions ranged the vast spaces. Chief among them were those of Prjevalsky between 1871 and 1885 traversing nearly the whole breadth of the continent and defining the great system of internal drainage and its mountain rampart. His work was supple mented and extended by many of his countrymen and in a high degree by the Swedish scholar Sven Hedin from 1894 onwards. Francis Younghusband and other British officers made great jour neys in the deserts of Gobi and Takla Makan and the remains of ancient cities attracted the Archaeological Survey of India for which Aurel Stein made important journeys.
Africa had been left at the end of the 18th century with the map of its interior a blank, leaving the lower course of the Nile, the middle of the Niger and the mouths of the Congo and Zambezi as openings to the mysteries of the interior. The Niger was traced to its mouth at an early date and between 1822 and 1827 Denham and Clapperton made difficult journeys in the Sahara and Sudan and discovered Lake Chad for the African Association. In David Livingstone, the greatest of all African travellers, began his missionary journeys from Cape Colony and explored the Kalahari desert discovering the salt lake Ngami. Convinced that mission work was of little use until the continent was opened up, he spent the rest of his life in settling the puzzling hydrography of Central Africa. He traced the course of the Zambezi by 1855. Later he pushed his way northward, discovering Lake Nyassa, exploring Lake Tanganyika and at the time of his death in 1873 he was intently following the north-flowing Lualaba in the hope that it would prove to be the ultimate source of the Nile. The Nile problem, under the encouragement of the Royal Geographical Society attracted many scientific and adventurous explorers. Richard F. Burton and John H. Speke in 1858 discovered the vast Victoria Nyanza on the high plateau under the equator collecting the head waters which issued from it as the White Nile, and push ing southwards reached Lake Tanganyika in the great rift which cleaves Africa from north to south. In 1864 Baker exploring the Sudan discovered the Albert Nyanza another feeder of the Nile and details of the geography of the Sudan were worked out by the patient labours of scientific men like Gerhard Rohlfs, Georg Scheinfurth and Junker between 1869 and 1871. H. M. Stanley, who as a newspaper correspondent, had been sent out by the New York Herald to "find Livingstone" in 1871 found also that he himself was a born explorer, and in a magnificent journey last ing from 1873 to 1879 he crossed Africa from east to west, prov ing that Livingstone's Lualaba ran not to the Nile but to the Congo and following that huge equatorial river to the sea. The formation of the Congo State under the King of the Belgians led to the rapid exploration of the Congo basin largely by Belgian officers, and the launching of a German colonial policy in 1884 brought many German explorers and men of science into eastern and western Africa. The race for the extension of spheres of in fluence solved the geographical problems of the once dark con tinent before the end of the century, French officers (General Lyautey prominent among them), completing our knowledge of the western Sahara and Sudan.
Australia was practically completely explored by the white set tlers under their own governments within the 19th century. Flin ders was the first to sail round Australia the coast of which he laid down in 18o 1—o3. The eastern mountain chain shut off the first settlers in New South Wales from the west but when the range was crossed rivers were found flowing inland and a vague theory of a great inland sea attracted explorers. Oxley traced part of the Lachlan river in 1816, the fine pastures of the Darling Downs were discovered in 1827 and the Murray river was followed to the sea in 1828. The search for new pastures was the main motive for discovery until after 185o when prospective new gold fields became a rival lure. The formation of the Swan River Settlement in 1834 and of Adelaide in 1836 gave new points of attack on the interior and in 184o E. J. Eyre travelled on foot round the shore of the Great Australian Bight which separated them. In Ludwig Leichhardt made a splendid journey of 3,00o miles across tropical Australia from east to west including the southern shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria and in the following year Charles Sturt, leaving the east coast farther south, penetrated to the very centre of the continent. Sturt succeeded in crossing the continent from south to north in 1862 after two abortive attempts and his route was afterwards followed by an overland telegraph line. In 1861 Robert O'Hara Burke and Wills crossed the continent with the aid of camels hut perished on the return, a calamity which drew many expeditions into the wilderness to learn their fate. From 1874 for more than 3o years Western Australia was the scene of exploration in search of pasture and of gold, beginning with the journeys of John Forrest, A. C. and F. J. Gregory, P. E. Warburton and Ernest Giles and culminating in the great 5,000 mile march of David Carnegie in 1895-97. Journeys of pure scientific research were also made, foremost amongst them those of Baldwin Spencer. Except in the polar region little remains for the twentieth century to do in the way of geographical discovery.