One great temptation to the exploration of the world is rapidly
passing away. There is little to be found that will gratify the love
of the marvellous. Of an absolutely new land there is now no lingering
hope. We know enough of the ocean to be sure that there exists no
undiscovered continent, no unsuspected peninsula—unless it be in the
Antarctic circle—and no island large enough to be either of value or
of interest. It is not, it is true, many years since Saghalien, which
was supposed to be a peninsula, was discovered to be an island; a new
island near Spitzbergen was found the other day; and there may be an
unnamed islet or two in the North Pacific still awaiting visitors; or a
rock in the Indian Ocean, as forgotten by all mankind as that strange
British dependency, the Chagos group—a series of hill-tops just peering
above the water—is by nearly all Englishmen; but such discoveries can
only be classed as rectifications of detail in geography. They neither
arouse imagination nor stimulate enterprise, as the old discoveries
did; nor can there be many more of them. The coasts of the world and
its oceans have been surveyed by the persistent energy of half-a-dozen
Governments, who have gone on with their work unnoticed for more
than a century; and the water-system of the little planet has been
thoroughly explored. The survey of the land is less complete; but it is
advancing, as the Scotchman said of Sunday, “with fearful regularity.”
What with England, Germany, France, Portugal, the African Association,
Mr. Thomson, Mr. Johnston, and the merchants hunting for bargains, we
shall soon be in possession of a perfect map of Africa; and are already
tolerably certain that no unknown race exists, and that there is no
considerable space in which we are likely to find either new animals,
or a new flora of any but scientific importance. The kind of delight
which woke among men when the first giraffe was caught, or the first
kangaroo was exactly sketched, is not, we fear, a delight reserved
for this generation. There is just a faint hope of such a “find” when
we get fairly inside New Guinea; but it is only faint. There may be a
buried city somewhere in the back of Peru, as interesting as the ruined
city in Cambodia, and Yucatan might repay much more patient searching
than it has received; while there are spaces in Thibet unknown to white
men, and a province or two outside Afghanistan which even Russians have
not visited. Indeed, if rumor does not lie, they discovered a village
a few weeks ago which no official had seen for eighty years, and where
the people were entirely self-governing; but the story looks a little
mythical, and the people thus discovered were still only Russians.
Brazil has not been thoroughly searched, but knowledge of its contents
accumulates at Rio, and its less-visited provinces are known to be
almost blank; and now Mr. im Thurn, with his patient courage, jumping
upwards from rock to rock and tree to tree, has revealed the mystery of
Roraima, the secret mountain-top in Guiana which a correspondent of our
own first set the world agog to discover. It is a plateau, twelve miles
by four, entirely bare of trees, with no animals upon its surface,
which is full of small lakes, and with nothing to repay the explorer
except the consciousness of victory, a magnificent prospect, and a few
orchids which fashionable gardeners will hardly prize. There is no clan
living up there isolated from mankind for a few thousand years; and
the wonderful animals of which the Indians talked, and which should, if
the fear of man is not instinctive, but only a result of centuries of
distrust, have trotted up to Mr. im Thurn saying, “Come, sketch me,”
existed only in the wild imaginations of men who honestly believe that
all dreams are real, and who cannot completely dissociate their own
thoughts from the subjects of their thoughts—the possible explanation
of many a rare old legend. So disappears one more though remote hope
of scientific excitement. There are not many Roraimas in the world;
and when some bold gold-seeker has traversed Eastern Peru, and some
adventurous Frenchman, with muskets for sale, has forced his way up
among the Shans behind Laos, and the African land-grabbers have met, as
they will meet, and the first Australian has killed the first German in
the centre of New Guinea, there will be little left for the explorer,
who now shakes his head over the wonderful dream we heard a missionary
recount thirty-five years ago,—that in the depths of Australia we
might yet discover a buried town, and evidences of a civilisation
which had rotted-down till its survivor was only an aborigine who had
forgotten fire. How that discovery would delight the Duke of Argyll,
giving him the victory in his life-long defence of the possibility of
utter degeneracy! But we fear that the pleasure—which, as hard-headed
thinker, he well deserves—is not reserved for him.
* * * * *
We fancy exploration, to become again thoroughly interesting, must be
directed towards things, rather than places; the whole world being
searched for things of value, and especially new dyes, new fibres, and
new foods. We have always thought that there was nearly as much to
interest men in Mr. Fortune’s hunt of years for the green indigo—which
undoubtedly exists, though he failed to find it—as in any exploration
of a new island. The delight of the American who has just discovered
a cotton-plant six times as fruitful as the old variety, must be very
keen, and not altogether tainted by the reflection—though that is
unavoidable—that in such a plant there must be dollars. Just imagine
what that man would do for mankind who found a new and vigorous
potato, different from the plant which now grows in Ireland, and which
is, according to a writer in the _Cornhill_, being propagated by
cuttings, which is a single undivided plant, liable to inherit, through
all its millions of apparently separate existences, the weaknesses of
the original tuber, and liable also to exhaustion, as of old age. It
has no children; only a power, so to speak, of having bits of its flesh
cut off and planted. It is never renewed from seeds, and so, by all
the analogies of Nature, will perish; though the banana, which also
is never renewed—and, indeed, in one variety, has become seedless—has
lasted ages. It is quite possible that there are only two bananas in
the world. Or imagine a new and successful cereal,—a real one in the
true silica armor, with a head twice as heavy, and grains twice as
nutritious, as those of wheat. Why should wheat be the final source
of bread? Man got saccharine matter from all sorts of things—grapes,
honey, and fruits—from the earliest times; but he was old in the world,
and had passed through many civilisations, before he discovered the
cane and crushed the beet, and so got his present boundless store
of sugar. A cereal as fruitful as wheat and as hardy as rye would
change the face of Northern Europe; while one which could flourish on
exhausted soil or in a damp climate, might affect the distribution of
mankind. The direct gain of mankind from such a discovery might be
counted by hundreds of millions; and we know of no law of Nature which
should prevent it, and of no guarantee that the cultivating races have
exhausted search. They most of them, in the early ages, when they
longed for substitutes for fish, and meat, and berries, must have
clutched the first edible grass they could find without much hunting
for better. Farmers will smile, but there may be grains they never
saw. Mincing Lane thinks it knows all about tea, and, no doubt, does
know a good deal; but Mr. Alexander Hosie, of the Chinese Consular
service, has eaten and drank a tea which needs no sugar. At least, in
the fascinating Report which he has presented to Sir H. Parkes, and
which has just been published by Parliament to teach travellers how to
observe, while recording the result of his hunt after white tree-wax,
he says:—“I come now to the last class of tea, the discovery of Mr.
Baber. If my memory is not at fault, he was regaled by a priest on
Mount Olmei with tea possessing both the flavor of milk and sugar. It
may have been in the very temple on the mountain-side in which I am
now writing that Mr. Baber was agreeably surprised. At anyrate, I am
sipping an infusion which is without doubt sweet, and which is declared
by the priest to be brewed from a naturally-prepared tea-leaf. It is
a large dark-brown leaf, and is very sweet when chewed. The people at
the bottom of the mountain, whom I first questioned regarding this tea,
asserted that the leaves were sweet because they were first steeped
in molasses; but the balance of evidence, as I have since found from
extensive inquiry, is against any such artificial preparation. The tree
is said to grow in only one gorge in the mountain, whence the leaves
are brought for sale.” What will Mincing Lane give for a shipload
of that tea, the very existence of which, till drunk and eaten, the
dealers would have regarded as a solemn joke? Men are wise about
silk-culture in Italy and Southern France; but they do not know, as
the Chinese told Mr. Hosie, that the mulberry-leaf is too strong food
for baby-silkworms, and that the wretched little insect, if you want
plenty of silk, should be fed-up in earliest infancy on the leaves of
a silkworm thorn-tree, fifteen feet high, unknown to Europeans, though
Mr. Hosie found it everywhere in Szechuen, growing by the road-sides,
and as hardy as the thorns, of which it is a variety, usually are.
How much difference in annual cash-earnings would the importation of
that thorn make in Lombardy? Why should not the Governments, which
so steadily map-out the seas, even combining to do it, institute a
patient and exhaustive search for new grasses able to produce flour,
and new vegetables fit for eating? They might not produce many Mr.
Hosies, who, if the Members of Parliament read his Report, will very
soon find himself as well-known in London as any popular author; but
they also might. The men like Mr. Fortune and Mr. Hosie, the men
whose observation nothing escapes, are not rare among botanists, and
would need but little encouragement to carry on for years a persistent
inquiry which, if carefully limited to defined objects, would almost
certainly produce some considerable result. The work, it will be said,
is one for Societies; but it seems a pity to waste the great resource
which Governments possess in the wide distribution of their agencies,
and in their power of carrying-on their inquiries without reference
to time. There will be a Legation at Pekin and Lima, and Jeddo, and
Teheran, a hundred years hence; and one official inquirer who records
everything, and is replaced when he departs, and is always protected
and treated with civility, can, in that space of time, accumulate
much knowledge, and will cost but little money. It is organised and
protracted inquiry, not a mere spasmodic effort, that we want to see,
and that will benefit mankind. Let the Societies hunt for their rare
orchids, and plants with lovely blooms, and all manner of scientific
novelties, and let the Governments promote the search for prosaic
things which the ordinary inquirer will neglect. We shall find no
new edible animal, we fear, unless it be some variety of goat which
can be bred into fatness, and made to yield sweet meat—kid properly
cooked, that is, roasted to death, is better than most mutton—but a new
cereal is clearly a possibility, and might be worth all the botanical
discoveries made since the settlers in Virginia sent home the potato.
The late Mr. Bagehot, who was always dropping witty wisdom, used to
say that the wildest speculator he ever heard of was the first man who
dropped grain into the earth and waited till it grew up, and to regret
that his name, like that of the discoverer of fire, and of the first
man who mastered a horse, was for ever lost. We think we may venture to
say that the name of the man who next discovers a cereal of true value
will not be.—_The Spectator._