Excerpt: The time may come when there will be no portion of the earth’s surface that has not been surveyed and explored by man. The work of enterprising travellers has now been carried on within a measurable distance of the North Pole; the highest mountain ranges are gradually succumbing to the geological surveyor; the heart of Africa is giving up to us its secrets and its treasures, and plans of all the desert places of the earth are being made and tabulated. The bottom of the deep sea was until quite recently one of these terræ incognitæ. It was regarded by most persons, when it entered into their minds to consider it at all, as one of those regions about which we do not know anything, never shall know anything, and do not want to know anything.

Résumé
Excerpt: The time may come when there will be no portion of the earth's surface that has not been surveyed and explored by man. The work of enterprising travellers has now been carried on within a measurable distance of the North Pole; the highest mountain ranges are gradually succumbing to the geological surveyor; the heart of Africa is giving up to us its secrets and its treasures, and plans of all the desert places of the earth are being made and tabulated. The bottom of the deep sea was until quite recently one of these terræ incognitæ. It was regarded by most persons, when it entered into their minds to consider it at all, as one of those regions about which we do not know anything, never shall know anything, and do not want to know anything.