To geography we owe all our knowledge of the features of the earth's surface, our intercourse with distant nations, and our enjoyments of numberless comforts and luxuries.

The sister sciences of geography and hydrography have enabled us to pursue our way to any quarter of the habitable and uninhabitable world.

With the history of geography, moreover, our proudest feelings are associated.

Where are there names dearer to us than those of the noble and devoted Columbus, of Sebastian Cabot, of Cook, of Humboldt, and of Belzoni and La Perouse?
Where shall we find the generous and heroic devotion of the explorers of Africa surpassed?
Of Denham, of Clapperton, of Oudeny, and of the many who have sacrificed their valuable lives to the pestilence of that climate or to the ferocity of its inhabitants ?--And where shall we look for the patient and persevering endurance of Parry, of Franklin, and of Back, in the northern regions of eternal snow?
If, ladies and gentlemen, fame were to wreathe a crown to the memory of such men, there would not be a leaf in it without a name.
The region of discovery was long open to the ambitious, but the energy and perseverance of man has now left but little to be done in that once extensive and honourable field.

The shores of every continent have been explored--the centre of every country has been penetrated save that of Australia--thousands of pounds have been expended in expeditions to the Poles--but this country, round which a girdle of civilization is forming, is neglected, and its recesses, whether desert or fertile, are unsought and unexplored.