d
volume, and eventually flows into a certain sea. What I naturally
speak about is its beauty, the rich valley through which it flows, the
graceful bridges by which it is spanned, the picturesque old towns
and romantic castles on the banks. And this is the common habit of
mankind. Our friends may bore us--and we may bore our friends
--with interminable accounts of the discomfort and inconveniences
and the petty little incidents of travel. But when they and we have
got through that and settle down to describe the country itself, it is
of its beauty that we speak.

Natural Beauty is what attracts us to a country. Its Natural Beauty is
the fact about it which remains most persistently in our memory.
And it is about its Natural Beauty that we are most inclined to speak.
Lastly, when we are in distant countries it is of the Natural Beauty
that we chiefly think. When our thoughts go back to the home
country it is not on its exact measurements and configuration that
they dwell, but on its beauty.

From all of which considerations I conclude that any description of
the Earth which excludes a description of its Natural Beauty is
incomplete. Geography must include a description of Natural Beauty.
And personally I would go so far as to say that the description of
Natural Beauty is the most important part of Geography.

Here I must answer an objection which may be raised--namely, that
Natural Beauty is the concern of Aesthetics, not of Geography. An
objector may freely acknowledge the value and importance of
recognising and describing the Natural Beauty of a country, but may
contend that this is beyond the province of Geography. It should be
left to poets and painters, he might say, and geographers should
confine themselves to the more prosaic business of exact
measurement, of accurate delineation, of reasoning regarding the
relation of the facts to one another, and of explaining the facts.

To such an objector I would reply that Geography is an art as well as
a science. And in parenthesis I may say that I doubt whether any
science can be complete which has not art behind it. We shall never
be able fully to know and understand the Earth or to describe what
we see if we use our intellectual and reasoning powers alone. If we
are to attain to a complete knowledge of the Earth, and if we are to
describe what we learn about it in an adequate manner so that others
may participate in our knowledge, then we must use our hearts as
wel