I may be taught from a book that water expands in
freezing, but I cannot realize that fact till I, sometime, leave water
in a pitcher and find it broken next morning. Then I know, in a way
never to be forgotten, about this scientific truth. So it is in
geography; we have always taken in certain facts regarding the relative
positions of land and water, mountain and plain, but if we had
attempted to go anywhere, with absolutely no guide but memory, nine out
of ten of us would be lost on the first stage of the journey. You are
now simply assimilating what you learned at school, and making the
facts, which you took on trust then, part and parcel of your actual
experience now. It seems to me one of the best ways to study geography
at home is to travel on paper. That comes nearest the real thing. Map
out a route, buy your tickets (in imagination), take your conveyance,
and on the way see everything possible to be gleaned from those eyes
which have gone before, and left a record of their impressions. Try
and think if you would see in the same way, and what else might be
observed by quick eyes, natural to occur in that part of the globe. If
one has imagination he may almost believe, in time, that he has really
visited the places so studied.
"I knew a young fellow, once, who lived in an insignificant town in
Vermont, and had never been fifty miles from home, yet who kept up such
journeys for years, and many a time, in talking with him, I, the real
traveler, would learn facts about certain localities where I had been,
from him who never set foot near them.
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