Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/547

Rh —our national banking system—which has carried us over seemingly insurmountable obstructions to brave trade triumphs.

The general considerations which I have named might lead to the inference that actual geographical disadvantages, in trade competition for instance, may sometimes be conquered by man's resourcefulness and energy. Within obvious limitations that is certainly true. At places, as we know, the borderland between geography and many of the natural sciences is often vague and confusedly interlaced. So perhaps also with mechanical and economic science our boundaries at certain spots overlap. Quick steamers, far-reaching telegraph lines, and the piercing of isthmuses by ship-canals may at the first glance appear outside the purview of the geographer. Yet from that particular aspect of geography which I have already spoken of as the Science of Distances we perceive how relevant they are, how worthy of study. Truly ours is a very catholic science, and we have seen how even the comparative value of national banking systems may help to explain seeming geographic inconsistencies, to reconcile facts with possibly unexpected results, and to show how the human element modifies, perhaps, the strictly logical conclusions of the geographer intent upon physical conditions alone. It is for the statesman and the philosopher to speculate upon the character and the permanency of such influences. Our success as an Empire will probably depend for its continuance upon a high level of national sagacity, watchfulness and resource, to make up for certain disadvantages, as I think, of our geographical position since the cutting of the Suez Canal; and it will also depend upon the comprehensive and intelligent study of all branches of geography, not the least important of which to my view is the Science of Distances—the science of the merchant, the statesman and the strategist.