The World of To-day. A Survey of the Lands and peoples of the Globe as seen in Travel and Commerce

Greek philsophers attained to true conceptions of the shape and measurement of the earth Out the " world " of classical geographers was practically confined to a longtudinal strip across the northern hemisphere ending with the Atlantic at one end and at the other with a shadowy India Europe being enlarged out of its due proportion all bounded to the south by the Sahara and to the north [...] The Dutch who had signalized their independence by brave attempts in the Arctic regions managed to secure for themselves a firm footing in the Far East whence in the middle of the seventeenth century their pioneers Tasman and others reached a new division of the world which after all fell to the lion's share of the nation that sent out Dampier to the same discoveries. [...] The Middle Kingdom is bounded on the north by the Mongolian deserts and steppes on the east by the plateaux of Central Asia that as high mountain ranges project laterally into the country to enclose the basins of its two great water-ways the Yang-tse-kiang or Blue River and the Hoang-ho or Yellow River. [...] All that can be done here is to trace the main outlines of national life for the benefit of readers whose mental picture of the Chinaman hardly goes beyond the pigtails of the men and the cramped feet of the women or a figure of fun that covers sly trickery with a "child-like and bland " smile. [...] The corruption of the mandarins is not so manifest perhaps in the administration of justice as in the neglect of the public interest and the embezzlment of public funds.