Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/250

246 Britain, few people really appreciate a map, so notoriously bad is the teaching of geography and so little is it encouraged. The ordinary atlas simply paints a blue colour over the surface of the sea, and will give for its series of special maps political land areas, and these even without any interpretation of the "why" and the "wherefore." In these maps care is taken to omit as much of the sea as possible compatible with a certain rectangular space, and the sea that is shown is merely a meaningless pale blue wash. Scarcely any attempt whatever is made to show whether these stretches of sea are deep or shallow, clear or muddy, brown or blue, rough or smooth; there are few indications of currents—tidal or otherwise. In many ways, in spite of an increasing number of scientific ships sailing over the ocean, we tend not only to care less and less about the sea, but actually in some ways to know less about it. To the great 20,000-ton leviathan going twenty to twenty-five knots, weather conditions, currents, etc., of vital importance to smaller and less powerful craft are of little significance—these monsters race through everything. The thousands of passengers in these ships make a voyage and know no more about the sea over which they have travelled than if they had been staying in a palatial hotel ashore. In these days ships go on definite