"Go West!" was
the advice given to adventurous people in America during the nineteenth
century. "The Last West and Best West" is what Canadians now call
their own North-West. And it certainly is the very last West of all;
for over there, across the Pacific, are the lands of southern Asia from
which the first emigrants began moving West so many thousand years ago.
Thus the circuit of the World and its migrations is now complete; and
we can at last look round and learn the whole story, from Farthest East
to Farthest West.
Most of it is an old, old story from the common points of view; and it
has been told over and over again by many different people and in many
different ways. But from one point of view, and that a most important
point, it is newer now than ever. Look at it from the seaman's point
of view, and the whole meaning changes in the twinkling of an eye,
becoming new, true, and complete. Nearly all books deal with the
things of the land, and of the land alone, their writers forgetting or
not knowing that the things of the land could never have been what they
are had it not been for the things of the sea.
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