Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania

Years ago the maps of the United States depicted a vast region west of the Missouri River stippled with dots, which were supposed to imitate sand, and marked with the portentous...

Excepting the arctic and the antarctic regions, with their fortifications of eternal ice and snow, intrepid explorers have made known nearly every part of the world. There Giant...

In the northwestern part of Wyoming, at the summit of the continent, is a tract of land containing more than three thousand square miles. It is a region which attracts thousands...

The diamonds of the Deccan, India, were trodden under foot for ages before they were recognized as diamonds. In Brazil the gold placer miners threw away the glassy pebbles as wo...

No other parts of the globe have been subject to so many kaleidoscopic changes by migrations during the past eight centuries as northern Asia and eastern Europe. In comparison b...

At this period of the world's progress, when so many marvellous inventions are taking place, one can scarcely realize the intense interest that was awakened by the first discove...

A continent twice the size of the United States lies sleeping beneath a mantle of snow and ice at the south pole. No vegetation save a few mosses and lichens exists anywhere on...

An expanse of land as large as the main body of the United States stretches across the northern part of Africa. From the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and from the foot of the...

Our newest possession, the Philippine Archipelago, in a way, is also our oldest, for the islands were discovered by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, about twenty-nine years after the...

Early in the sixteenth century the island of Australia became known to the Portuguese; later the Dutch, who had valuable possessions in the East Indies, sent exploring expeditio...

The East India Islands is a name which embraces nearly all the islands of the Malay Archipelago, together with the Philippines. The largest of these are New Guinea, Borneo, Suma...

Several thousand years ago a mighty conflict occurred between the sea and the subterranean forces in the north Atlantic five hundred miles northwest of Scotland. A violent earth...

Who has not had the youthful imagination fired by the "Arabian Nights"? The simplicity and lifelike reality of these interesting stories, made even more fascinating by their Ori...

Death Valley, or the Arroyo del Muerte, as the Spanish called it, is in the western part of southern California, near the oblique boundary of Nevada, a little way north of Nevad...

Hot, damp, and swampy along the coast lowlands; rugged and fairly pleasant in the high plateau lands--that is Borneo, an island as large as the State of Texas. Borneo has a grea...

The name Australia, like that of California, conjures up in the mind visions of gold; and the story of the gold excitement in both is very similar. January 24, 1848, was the red...

The Samoa, or Navigator's, Islands, discovered by a Dutch navigator in 1722, attracted but little attention until the introduction of Christianity in 1830. Only a few of the gro...

Two lofty mountain ranges with a deep valley between them lie at the eastern side of the Indian Ocean. The Malay Peninsula is one range; the island of Sumatra is the other. The...

By digging at London right through the centre of the earth one would emerge about a day's ride, in an automobile car, from the capital of New Zealand--if only the automobile cou...

Almost midway between the United States and China a mountain chain more than three thousand miles long crosses the tropic of Cancer. Only the highest peaks, however, reach above...

The statement that "one half the world does not know how the other half lives, nor how it is influenced," applies with double force to the peoples living on the high plateau of...

Perhaps there is no section of the globe about which most well-informed persons know so little as the southern part of South America. Judged by the reports of early discoverers...

Nowhere else on the face of the globe is one so vividly impressed by the vastness of the work of corrasion as in the northwestern part of Arizona. Here the mutilated breast of M...

A vague knowledge of a sea that washed the eastern shores of Cathay, or China, was gained from the reports of the famous Venetian traveller, Marco Polo. After spending several y...

If only Dame Nature had distributed the rainfall of the United States a bit more evenly, land enough to feed about fifty millions of people would not have required an expenditur...

Although reptiles appeared first in the period known as the Carboniferous Age, or age of plant life, they did not attain their greatest development until Jurassic and Cretaceous...

A huge projecting limestone rock, in form like a reclining lion, guards the entrance to the narrow water passage which separates Europe from Africa. This wonderful feature, the...

Crossing the Black Sea, we leave the steamer at Batum and take the train for Baku, the commercial centre of the greatest oil field in the world--a region where the supply of pet...

There are many table mountains in different parts of the world, but the one which I am about to describe is interesting both from geological and financial stand-points. The so-c...

Within the tropical parts of the great South Sea are submarine gardens that in the beauty of their floral forms and their richness of coloring rival the most elaborate flowerbed...

Almost any unusual form in nature is apt to attract the eye and interest the beholder; and when such natural objects resemble artificial ones or bear a fanciful resemblance to a...

The history of Greenland really begins about the year 986 A. D., when Eric the Red, a chieftain who had been banished from Iceland, landed on the island with some of his followe...

While cruising in the Pacific Ocean Magellan discovered a chain of islands about fifteen hundred miles east of the Philippine group. While he lay at anchor, predatory natives st...

In 1642 a Dutch navigator named Abel Janszoon Tasman discovered the island which now bears his name. Tasman did not know that he had discovered an island, but thought that he ha...

There is a great wealth of literature about what we call the world's productive lands--that is, the densely peopled lands that yield grain, meat, sugar, fruit, and all the vario...

XXII. THE ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC 226 XXIII. AUSTRALIA 233 XXIV. THE GREAT BARRIER REEF 244 XXV. THE GOLD FIELDS OF AUSTRALIA 250 XXVI. TASMANIA 258 XXVII. NEW ZEALAND 262 XXVIII...

CHAPTER I. THE WEALTH OF THE ARID SOUTHWEST 4 II. THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO 27 III. YELLOWSTONE PARK 35 IV. TWO PREHISTORIC CEMETERIES--GIANT REPTILES AND GIANT TREES 51...

The author wishes to give credit to Mr. Jacques W. Redway, F.R.G.S., for suggesting the subject of Part I and for the inspiration he received from the distinguished geographer i...