It is always with some degree of hesitation that I introduce geographical details into my books, as I well know that a taste for the study of physical geography has not been developed among my countrymen.  Where among all our colleges is there a well-supported chair of physical geography occupied by an American?  We sometimes hear of a “Professor of Geology and Physical Geography,” but the last is only a sort of appendage—­a tail—­to the former.  When a student of American geography begins the study in earnest, he discovers that our geographies are insufficient, are filled with errors, and that our maps possess a greater number of inaccuracies than truths.  When he goes into the field to study the physical geography of his native land, he is forced to go through the disagreeable process of unlearning all he has been taught from the poor textbooks of stay-at-home travellers and closet students, whose compilations have burdened his mind with errors.  In despair he turns to the topographical charts and maps of the “United States Coast and Geodetic Survey,” and of the “Engineer Corps of the United States Army,” and in the truthful and interesting results of the practical labors of trained observers he takes courage as he enters anew his field of study.  The cartographer of the shop economically constructs his unreliable maps to supply a cheap demand; and strange to say, though the results of the government surveys are freely at his disposal, he rarely makes use of them.  It costs too much to alter the old map-plates, and but few persons will feel sufficiently interested to criticise the faults of his latest edition.

“How do you get the interior details?” I once asked the agent of one of the largest map establishments in the United States.  “Oh,” he answered, “when we cannot get township details from local surveys, we sling them in anyhow.”  An error once taught from our geographies and maps will remain an error for a generation, and our text-book geographers will continue to repeat it, for they do not travel over the countries they describe, and rarely adopt the results of scientific investigation.  The most unpopular study in the schools of the United States is that of the geography of our country.  It does not amount merely to a feeling of indifference, but in some colleges to a positive prejudice.  The chief mountain-climbing club of America, counting among its members some of the best minds of our day, was confronted by this very prejudice.  “If you introduce the study of physical geography in connection with the explorations of mountains, I will not join your association,” said a gentleman living almost within the shadow of the buildings of our oldest university.

A committee of Chinese who called upon the school authorities of a Pacific-coast city, several years since, respectfully petitioned that “you will not waste the time of our children in teaching them geography.  You say the world is round; some of us say it is flat.  What difference does it make to our business if it be round or flat?  The study of geography will not help us to make money.  It may do for Melican man, but it is not good for Chinese.”