Summary
The legions of explorers, pressing on through hostile tracts of jungle, desert or ice, were often inspired by venerable myths and yarns, or unscrupulously evoked them to screw money out of their backers: the myth of a vast region in the southern hemisphere, Terra Australis, or the dream of a north-west passage, or the idea that there was clear water at the North and South Poles. Fernández-Armesto's thoughtful adjustment to the usual lament is his suggestion that the emphasis on blank spaces, on planting national flags in new patches of ground, has clouded the issue - our clichés of exploration blind us to the real frontiers of our world, the great gaps still remaining in our knowledge.
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Extract
Search and Destroy
Search and destroy Pathfinders: a global history of exploration Felipe Fernández-Armesto Oxford University Press, 448pp, £25
It has become a convention of books about exploration to explain dolefully that there is nothing left to find. All that remain...See the full content of this document
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