Far Places

In writing Far Places I confess to a definite object. Behind the descriptions of remote localities, the details of adventures, lurks the hope that the book may, in some small measure, encourage an interest in the science of geography. The word stirs memories of childhood days, of laborious learning of the names of countries, their capital cities and other important towns, their physical features, the principal commodities each produces. But geography is much more than that. Without a knowledge of it, how can we understand history, and the tangled sequence of political events? How can we visualise the economic development of the world from those dim ages of the past when man was a wild animal hunting his prey much as the wolf does to-day, to this period of aeroplanes, of telegraphs, telephones and radios?