Excerpt from The Colonies and the Century
Australasia, of South Africa, of Northern India and Burmah, of Northern and Western Canada. And of many island possessions amidst the seas, were all blank or alien. They were unknown to civilisation, to commerce, or to society. They contributed naught to the wealth or progress of mankind. Known only to the scanty or savage or unlettered peoples who roamed their wilds or tenanted their untravelled depths, they were spheres of curiosity or conjecture, rather than of influence or activity. Scenes of myth or mystery, they were the prey of inventive chronicler or fanciful fable-monger. Travellers said what they liked concerning regions where their pens and pencils could confidently run riot in imaginative exaggera tions. Though there are notable exceptions in the way of truthful narration, the books and prints of that period too often bear amusing testimony to the un bridled freedom with which visitors to distant and nu known countries exercised their descriptive faculties. Then, as now, the De Rougemonts of the press found an ample and a credulous auditory.
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