There are mainly two divisions of this history--the discovery of the Old World and that of the New, including Australia under the latter term.

Though we speak of geographical discovery, it is really the discovery of new tribes of men that we are thinking of.

It is only quite recently that men have sought for knowledge about lands, apart from the men who inhabit them.
One might almost say that the history of geographical discovery, properly so called, begins with Captain Cook, the motive of whose voyages was purely scientific curiosity.

But before his time men wanted to know one another for two chief reasons: they wanted to conquer, or they wanted to trade; or perhaps we could reduce the motives to one--they wanted to conquer, because they wanted to trade.

In our own day we have seen a remarkable mixture of all three motives, resulting in the European partition of Africa--perhaps the most remarkable event of the latter end of the nineteenth century.
Speke and Burton, Livingstone and Stanley, investigated the interior from love of adventure and of knowledge; then came the great chartered trading companies; and, finally, the governments to which these belong have assumed responsibility for the territories thus made known to the civilised world.