who have
always lived in the same place are unable to see its full beauty. The
inhabitants of the Gilgit frontier, when I first went among them, had
never left their mountains, and were altogether ignorant of the
special grandeur of their beauty. They thought all the world was just
the same. But men who have seen many varieties of Natural Beauty
and have taken pains to compare the varieties with one another
become trained to see more Beauty in each feature. Fresh
discoveries of Beauty are thus made, and our knowledge of the
Beauty of the Earth is thereby increased.

* * *

What I hope, then, is that this Society should definitely recognise
that learning to see the Beauty in natural features and comparing the
peculiar beauties of the different features with one another is within
the scope of Geography, and will indeed become its chief function. I
should like to see the tradition established and well known and
recognised that we encourage the search for Natural Beauty, and
look upon the discovery of a new region which possesses special
beauty, and the discovery of a new beauty in a region already well
known, as among the most important geographical discoveries to be
made. In this matter I trust our Society will take the lead.
Englishmen are born lovers of Natural Beauty and born travellers.
The search for Natural Beauty ought, therefore, to be a congenial
task for this Society. As I have tried to make clear, we cannot really
know and understand the Earth--which is the aim of Geography
--until we have seen its beauties and compared the varying beauties of
the different features with one another and seen how they affect man
and man affects them. We are constituted as a Society for the
purpose of diffusing geographical knowledge, and I trust that in
future we shall regard knowledge of the Beauty of the Earth as the
most important form of geographical knowledge that we can diffuse.

When I was Writing out the lecture which I was invited to give
before the Society on "The Geographical Results of the Tibet
Mission" I could not resist devoting special attention to the natural
beauty of Tibet. But as I read the manuscript through I feared that
this attention to Beauty would be regarded by our Society as a lapse
from the narrow path of pure Geography, and that I should be
frowned upon in consequence and not regarded as a serious
geographer. I ought, I feared, to have devoted more attention to
survey matters, to the exact tren