darby (1962) the problem of geographical description

The Problem of Geographical DescriptionAuthor(s): H. C. DarbySource: Transactions and Papers (Institute of British Geographers), No. 30 (1962), pp. 1-14Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute ofBritish Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/621298 .Accessed: 04/08/2011 06:15

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THE PROBLEM OF GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION

Presidential Address

H. C. DARBY, LITT.D.

(Professor of Geography, University College London)

THERE have been many definitions of geography as an academic study, and there is a variety of opinion about its content and method. Yet everyone - or almost everyone - must agree that, amongst other things, geography is concerned with the description of the earth. The term itself, means 'writing about the earth', by which the Greeks understood 'describing the earth'. Whatever else a geographer may do, the simple aim of describing the earth must appear to him as both logical and sensible. In 1909, Mackinder could say 'that one of the chief ends of geography is description'.1 And in the same year W. M. Davis was writing: 'One of the most serious tasks of the geographer is the preparation of accurate and intelligible descriptions of the form of the lands'.2 Many other people have made similar statements.

In spite of this simple and obvious objective, the fact is that good description of landscape or townscape is not an outstanding feature of the writing of professional geographers. There are many valuable accounts of the economies of various countrysides, many interesting narratives of the histories of various countrysides, many revealing analyses of the elements in the scenery of various countrysides. There are, on the other hand, relatively few attempts to convey an impression of what those countrysides look like. Many well-known geographical studies leave us completely without any idea of the appearance of the countrysides they discuss. We look in vain for - to use an old-fashioned word - a 'likeness' of, say, chalk downlands or clay vales or mountain uplands. What we do sometimes encounter is a kind of verbal cartography, as unattractive as it is unrevealing.

Let us at once acknowledge that in attempting to describe a landscape, the geographer faces many difficulties. One difficulty arises from the fact that he usually has to describe an area larger than can be seen at one time. This may be resolved by a choice of small representative areas, or by generalization based upon features common throughout the larger area as a whole. But even when this problem is resolved, there still remains the inherent difficulty of conveying a visual impression in a sequence of words. This is one of the disadvantages of the writer as compared with the painter. We can look at a picture as a whole, and it is as a whole that it leaves an impression upon us; we can, however, read only line by line. This is the theme discussed by the German critic, G. E. Lessing (1729-81), in his Laocoon of 1766, in which he attempted to define the respective limitations of the artist and of the poet in the act of representation. 'What the eye sees at a glance, he [the poet] counts out to us gradually, with a perceptible

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slowness'; and, adds Lessing in a later paragraph, 'elements arranged in succession cannot possibly have the effect which they have when placed side by side'.3 And again: 'the co-existence of the physical object comes into collision with the consecutiveness of speech'.

It is a humiliating experience for a geographer to try to describe even a small tract of country in such a way as to convey to the reader a true likeness of the reality. Such description falls so easily into inventory form in which one un- related fact succeeds another monotonously. How difficult it is to transcend a painstaking compilation of facts by an illuminating image. Some descriptive writers have tried to replace the sober enumeration of characteristics by an entirely impressionistic method, not always with success. Our attention has been drawn recently to the 'use of simile and metaphor in geographical description',4 but metaphors and imagery do not necessarily reflect the same facts to different people. Humboldt thought that 'the delineation of natural scenery' should draw its vitality from the scene itself, and not from what he called the 'adornments of diction'. Quoting an Arab saying, he declared that 'the best description is that by which the ear is converted into an eye'.5 It is far from easy to do. A series of geographical facts is much more difficult to present than a sequence of historical facts. Events follow one another in time in an inherently dramatic fashion that makes juxtaposition in time easier to convey through the written word than juxtaposition in space. Geographical description is inevitably more difficult to achieve successfully than is historical narrative.

In facing this difficulty, the geographer is not alone. John Masefield, for example, in recounting his early experiments in authorship, wrote:

Once at a gathering of young writers, a critic said to me 'But of course, any fool can describe'.

I envied him the power of thinking description negligible. It did not seem so to me. To me it was a part of writing, always necessary, often important, and never lightly to be undertaken.6

Somerset Maugham, too, more than once, has spoken of the difficulty of conveying the likeness of a scene through the medium of the written word.7 Think- ing of one scene, he said: 'A glance at a photograph is more likely to give you its peculiar thrill than half a dozen pages of careful description. No, I did not want to write a book of travel.' On one occasion Maugham went so far as to say that there is 'nothing so tedious' as 'long descriptions of scenery'. On another occasion he referred to the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. These begin with what is called 'the composition of place', that is the forming of a mental image of the scene which is to be the subject of meditation. Maugham tells us:

I had the curiosity on one occasion to attempt to do one of the exercises myself. It was a singular experience. I began with the composition of place. It seems simple enough, but I found it none too easy.

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As long ago as 1883, Francis Galton had discussed the varying power of visualization among human beings.8

In spite of these inherent difficulties, there are many passages of description which have given delight to generations of people. To Humboldt himself, the most successful writer in the art 'of representing what he has seen' was George Forster (1754-94), the chronicler of Captain Cook's second voyage (1772-75);9 and Humboldt, as he said, owed a great deal to Forster. Each one of us has his own list of tours de force. Some prefer the descriptions - remarkable by any count - of the American Far West by those early geologists such as J. W. Powell and G. K. Gilbert. Others have never wavered in their loyalty to Wordsworth's description of the Lake District. Yet others remain in thrall to the descriptive prose of Elisee Reclus (1830-1905) of whom it was said that 'he raised anew geography into literature'.10 Those interested in the Pacific have much to choose from, but some people delight in the plain words of Captain Alexander Maconochie, the first professor of geography in the United Kingdom.1l Nor must we forget more modern writers. There are, for example, those descriptions of Mediterranean Islands by Alan Ross, whose forte, we are told, 'is in the imaginative re-creation of landscape in words'.12

Handbooks on the teaching of geography sometimes supplement their bibliographies of more formal and technical studies by reading lists of the literature of description. None other than A. J. Herbertson between 1901 and 1903 edited an anthology of such descriptions. It appeared in six volumes, each devoted to a continent, and the whole was published under the general title of 'Descrip- tive geographies from original sources'.13 The series, in its own words, attempted 'to depict the world in the language of men who have seen it'. One other such anthology must be mentioned - Margaret Anderson's Splendour of Earth which appeared in 1954. From travellers, from novelists and from others, she collected an array of descriptions in the belief 'that no deadly accurate, purely technical description can bring vividly to life a mountain, a great river, or even a climate, can make it our own to love and remember, as an imaginative description by a great writer can do'. She went on to add that 'we must have the technical descriptions' but that we also needed 'imagery, ideas, beautiful words well used to give full enjoyment and appreciation'.14 J. K. Wright has also stressed the same need in his discussion of 'the place of imagination in geography'.15 More recently, H. C. Prince, too, has written about 'the geographical imagination'.16

Allied to descriptive geography, and perhaps part of it, is what some have called 'aesthetic geography'. Humboldt recognized many pioneers in the aesthetic appreciation of the visual scene. Since then, among the geographers who have considered the visual characteristics of landscapes, and who have exemplified their viewpoints in areal studies, the Germans, Wilhelm Volz17 and Ewald Banse,l8 stand out. The latter, especially, in his concern with the 'soul' (Seele) of a landscape, went far beyond the objective comprehension of scenes. In England, Vaughan Cornish19 and Sir Francis Younghusband20 developed similar

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ideas. Interesting though their subjective approach remains, it has found no general support among English geographers.

It was Joseph Wimmer who said in 1885 that 'the descriptive geographer is nothing other than a landscape painter and map drawer in words'.21 And we might well pause and ask: 'Do the problems of the landscape painter throw any light upon those of the geographer?' Humboldt in the Cosmos certainly drew an analogy between 'descriptive diction and graphical representations', and he devoted a section to a discussion of landscape painting with its 'delineation of the physiognomy of natural scenery'.22 Since Humboldt's day, a great deal has been written about the history and theory of the visual arts. We have but to think of John Ruskin (1819-1900). Just as many art schools today provide courses in anatomy, so parts 2, 5 and 7 of Ruskin's Modern Painters (1843-60) in effect provided a course in physical geography for artists. But quite apart from the technical problems of representation, there is an over-riding consider- ation common to both artist and writer. This has been considered recently by E. H. Gombrich in Art and Illusion published in 1960.23 His basic thesis is that any ideal of painting a scene 'exactly as one sees it' is an absurdity that rests upon a naive view of perception. Perception, Gombrich argues, is conditioned by the attitude and the 'mental set' of the observer. It cannot be dissociated from the schemata, or the patterns, that an observer imposes upon experience. This is argued with a wealth of examples drawn from many periods and countries.

It is true that a contrast has sometimes been drawn between the subjective impression of the artist and the objective description of the geographer. But is the geographer objective? Can he be? In describing a landscape, is he not committed by his past training and his past experiences - by his prejudices, if you will? Just as the portrait an artist paints will tell you much about the artist as well as about his sitter, so the description of a countryside will tell you a great deal about the writer. This is the belief implicit in David Lowenthal's recent paper on 'Geography, Experience and Imagination'. From a different angle it develops a theme akin to that of Gombrich. Each private view of the world, it says, is unique, because each one of us 'chooses from and reacts to the milieu in a different way. We elect to see certain aspects of the world and to avoid others'.24 What applies to individuals applies also to different social groups. The simple fact is that we see only what we have learned to see.

Recent work has shown what a complicated thing perception is,25 but, instead of referring to this work, may I quote from a book that appeared as long ago as 1864. It was written not by a professional geographer but by one who was none the less as much a geographer as any of us. I refer to George Perkins Marsh's Man and Nature:

To the natural philosopher, the descriptive poet, the painter, and the sculptor, as well as to the common observer, the power most important to cultivate, and, at the same time, hardest to acquire, is that of seeing what is

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before him. Sight is a faculty; seeing, an art. The eye is a physical, but not a self-acting apparatus, and in general it sees only what it seeks.26

Appended to the paragraph in which these words occur is a footnote that sets out four lines of verse translated from the Danish:

In the material eye, you think sight lodgeth! The eye is but an organ. Seeing streameth From the soul's inmost depths. The fine perceptive Nerve springeth from the brain's mysterious workshop.

At this point someone might say that the complete geographer (as opposed to the specialist in one of its branches) would, or should, be able to comprehend objectively all the various elements in a landscape - in short, that he should achieve a 'synthesis'. I can only express doubt whether any such synthesis can ever be achieved in 'the brain's mysterious workshop'. May I repeat a paragraph written by Carl Sauer:

It is neither necessary nor desirable that we consider the totality of region as the common basis of geographic study. Individual interest and competence begins and may remain with specific elements of nature and of culture and with the meaning of their spatial relations. If we say that our job is only to synthesize, we are likely to become dependent in all things on others for the validity of what we assemble and interpret.27

One must distinguish between synthesis and the selectivity of art.28 Attempts at synthesis so frequently result in what has been called 'enumerative description',29 and in tedious and pedestrian compilation that brings its own objective to nought. It sometimes seems a pity that the aims and methods of regional geography were encumbered by such a dubious concept as that of synthesis. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines the word as 'combination, composition, putting together', and as the 'building up of separate elements ... into a con- nected whole'. But different people do not want to, indeed are not able to, put the same things together; nor can they put them together in the same way. One way would be by the co-operative enterprise envisaged by Edward A. Acker- man - 'analysis by several systematic specialists rather than by one reporter'.30 Whatever might be the technical excellences of such a composition, I can imagine some people thinking that such an assemblage of quite separate systematic approaches could not possibly constitute regional geography. Another method might be to view the facts from one standpoint, or to group them around some major theme just as Roger Dion's Le Val de Loire (1934) is grouped around man's struggle with a river. Under some such treatment, the barriers between systematic and regional geography become less formidable. But one thing is certain: we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that such a treatment can never be 'complete', nor can it be 'objective'.

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Historians have also discussed the objectivity of their discipline. Ranke in the 1830s said that the task of the historian was simply to record what 'actually happened',31 as if one could assemble the facts about the past into an uncoloured narrative that, apart from new discovery, could stand for all time. But the truth is that every age looks back upon preceding ages with different eyes. Each age asks different questions, and history has to be rewritten time and again. 'His- tory', said Sir Lewis Namier, is 'necessarily subjective and individual, conditioned by the interest and vision of the historian',32 and, we may add, by the climate of opinion in which he lives. Our views about, say, the French Revolution are not the same as those of our predecessors - in 1815, or in 1848, or before 1917. So it is with the geographer. An American who has studied types of settle- ment in Western Europe can never again look in quite the same way upon the landscape of his own Mid-West where geometry has triumphed over geography. Conversely, a West European who has lived in the Middle West can never again think in the same way about the size and shape of his own townships, so delicately adjusted to differing soils and terrain.

In historical thinking there has been great debate about whether history is a science or an art. It was perhaps an unnecessary debate because history, like geography, is both. Geography is a science in the sense that what facts we per- ceive must be examined, and perhaps measured, with care and accuracy. It is an art in that any presentation (let alone any perception) of those facts must be selective and so involve choice, and taste, and judgment. A possible answer to a plea for 'scientific objectivity' would be to present the geography of an area in terms of photographs and maps; but I am far from sure about the objectivity of these.

Some of our weekly journals run literary competitions that provoke great ingenuity. One type of such competition selects a public event and invites an appreciation of it in the manner of say, Dr. Johnson, or Charles Lamb or Joseph Conrad; or sometimes invites verses upon it in the manner of, say, Milton, or Dryden or Wordsworth. It would be interesting to organize such a competition for geographers, and to invite an account of the regional geography of south Lancashire in the manner of, say, Estyn Evans or Dudley Stamp or S. W. Wooldridge. I venture to say that the various accounts would not be identical, any more than a portrait of a man by Graham Sutherland would be identical with one of the same man by Henry Lamb. Each picture would have its own validity, and I would prefer to possess a portrait by either artist than the very best photograph of our imaginary sitter.

However interesting and useful it may be, we have been told that 'description is not an end in itself',33 and that Geography ought 'to be something different from a mere description'.34 It was Hettner who wrote in 1898: 'mere description has been replaced in all branches of geography by search for causes';35 and we have long become accustomed to hearing such phrases as 'explanatory description' and 'interpretative description'.

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Lessing in the Laocoon was led to consider the possibility of explanatory interpretation as something arising from the very nature of verbal as opposed to pictorial representation.36 As we have seen, he thought that verbal description involved an inherent difficulty, but he also recognized that the balance of advantage was not wholly against it. He pointed to a well-known painter of verbal pictures, none other than Homer, who refrained from 'piecemeal delineation', but, instead, sought to 'distribute this picture in a sort of story of the object, in order to let its parts, which we see side by side in Nature, follow in his painting after each other and as it were keep step with the flow of the narrative'. The result is that in words 'we see arising what with the painter we can only see as already arisen'. This, Lessing called the 'artifice of changing the Co-existing into an actual Successive'. He gave the famous example of the description of the shield of Achilles in Book eighteen of the Iliad- 'that famous picture in respect of which especially Homer was from of old regarded as a teacher of painting':

A shield, people will say - that is surely a single physical object, the description of which and its parts ranged side by side is not permissible to a poet? And this particular Shield, in its material, in its form, in all the figure that covered the vast surface of it, Homer has described in more than a hun- dred splendid verses, with such exactness and detail that it has been easy for modern artists to make a replica of it alike in every feature.

To this special objection I reply, that I have replied to it already. Homer, that is to say, paints the Shield not as a finished and complete thing, but as a thing in process. Here once more he has availed himself of the famous artifice, turning the co-existing of his design into a consecutive, and thereby making of the tedious painting of a physical object the living picture of an action ... When it is complete, we are amazed at the work, but it is with the believing amazement of an eye-witness who has seen it in the making.

With this, Lessing contrasted Virgil's description of the shield of Aeneas in Book eight of the Aeneid. This enumerative description, 'with the everlasting: "Here is", "and there is", "nearby stands", and "not far off one sees", becomes so frigid and tedious that all the poetic ornament which Virgil could give it was needed to prevent us finding it unendurable'. To this we must add that even the highest literary skill is no substitute for explanation.

But immediately we seek to explain as well as to describe, problems arise - and not only problems but dangers. We have been warned by one geographer that 'explanation, in the field of earth phenomena, involves known dangers for the geographer'- because his inquiry might lead him into other disciplines.37 Another geographer, Derwent Whittlesey in the next decade, put it differently by asking: 'Is there a solution for the puzzle of writing incontestable geography that also incorporates the chains of event necessary to understand fully the geography of the present day?'38 The implications of this question involve us at once in philosophical debate about the nature of the geography as an

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academic discipline. I am not going to venture into these realms of higher thought. I would like to try to answer the question on a much more lowly level, by looking at what has been done in practice. Broadly speaking, we may recognize at least six possible kinds of solution to Whittlesey's 'puzzle' - the method of sequent occupance, that of the introductory narrative, that of the parenthesis, that of the footnote, that of the retrospective cross-section, and that of the present tense. There are, moreover, variants and combinations of these methods that also provide challenges to literary skill and ingenuity.

The term 'sequent occupance' was invented by Derwent Whittlesey in 1929 to describe a chronological series of cross-sections of the geography of an area.39 The idea was not new, and one might query Whittlesey's analogy with genetic processes because the mechanism of biological succession is very different from that of economic and cultural change. But the term was convenient and, maybe in its first impact, even arresting; it had, moreover, the merit of drawing attention to the historical element in geography; and it has been used in many papers and dissertations. A common arrangement of these studies is a division into three parts: (1) a description of the physical basis; (2) an account of successive cross- sections; and (3) a description of the human geography of the 'present day'.

In the years following 1929, Whittlesey seems to have reconsidered the scope of the term he had so successfully introduced. During a discussion in 1937, he said: 'sequent occupance implies that what has existed in the past is our concern only if it has left vestiges and so exists also, in effect, in the present'.40 In the following year, R. E. Dodge criticized Whittlesey's original paper of 1929 for not observing this very limitation of the term. Whittlesey, in speaking of New England, had referred to the stage of Indian hunting and collecting, but, wrote R. E. Dodge, he gave no indication that the phase had 'left an impress on the landscape' of 1929.41 It must be said that studies involving sequent occupance have found it difficult, if not impossible, to restrict their accounts of past geographies in the manner required by R. E. Dodge.

Whittlesey in 1945 considered the relation of sequent occupance to the broader question of the reconstruction of the geographies of past periods, and he set out his answer in the following words:

From studies which have been made [of the geography of consecutive earlier periods], it appears that much of the matter would have no relevance to present-day geography of the area. The sequence of wanted items might be culled from the facts presented, but it would not leap to the reader's eye and mind.42

In studies involving sequent sequence, there is a variable amount of space devoted to the account of past geographies. In some studies, it occupies about a quarter of the total; in other studies, it amounts to as much as three-quarters. Clearly, there is a variety of emphasis and a gradation between studies that serve to introduce the present-day scene on the one hand, and cross-sections for their own sake on the other hand.

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This method of providing explanation has the advantage in some people's eyes of avoiding the reproach of being 'historical' rather than 'geographical'. As Whittlesey wrote: 'Such a study is indubitably geographic ... it is historical in only two senses: it employs techniques of historiography and it presents material of antiquarian interest. It omits the compelling time sequence of related events which is the vital spark of history.'43 One might well wonder what is the advantage of such omission. Might not the very 'time sequence of related events' provide the explanation of some complex of geographical facts?

In the second method - that of the introductory narrative - a series of cross-sections is replaced by an account of the processes of change leading up to the geography of the 'present day'. Some might regard this as differing but little in principle from the method of sequent occupance. Others might view it as being fundamentally different in that it substitutes what can only be called 'historical narrative' for a presentation that, to use Whittlesey's phrase, is 'indubitably geographic'. The introductory narrative frequently does not appear at the beginning of a study but after a description of the physical geography and before that of the economic and cultural geography.

The arrangement of the narrative varies. Sometimes it takes the form of a general account covering the development of a region as a whole, as, for example, in Rene Musset's Le Bas-Maine (1917). At other times the general narrative is replaced by a series of separate narratives each dealing with a specific feature which is then described in its 'present-day' aspect. Something along these lines is frequently encountered in other French regional monographs such as Albert Demangeon's La Picardie (1905). There are many other variants; at times the narrative even incorporates a cross-section as in A. E. Smailes's North England (1960).

The length of the narrative or narratives varies from a relatively brief section to a sustained account that dominates the study. Just as studies in sequent occupance grade into those largely concerned with cross-sections for their own sake, so do introductory narratives grade into accounts of processes for their own sake. Here is one example of the gradation. In a study of the tobacco belt of North Carolina, the narrative amounts to some 15 per cent of the whole.44 In a study of the rice country of south-western Louisiana, it takes up well over 50 per cent.45 Finally, a study of the lumbering district of western Louisiana is almost entirely concerned with the processes behind the features of the landscape of 1957 -the abandoned towns, the ponds and the mill foundations, to say nothing of the cut-over land itself with its second-growth forest.46 The element of narrative is so prominent that the paper may well be regarded as a study in the 'history behind geography'.

It is difficult to delimit a frontier between 'explanatory description' and narrative for its own sake. It is true that it has been said that the frontier is reached when a sequence of occupance studies, or a narrative of change, ceases to be concerned with the relict features of a past age to be seen in a 'present-day' landscape.47 But ideas about the relevance of the past to the present may depend

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upon the level of causation to which one wishes to pursue an inquiry, or, let us admit it, they may well be entirely subjective.

A third method of providing an explanatory element in geographical description is by means of retrospective reference. It is to start not at the beginning but with the present day - to describe an existing landscape, and to look back only when, and in so far as, this or that element cannot be explained in contemporary terms. This involves the inclusion of 'asides' and parentheses, and, in the words of V. C. Finch, 'the written structure may well provide for them to be expressed in that manner'.48 By means of such 'flash-backs' the present features of a landscape may be interpreted. Naturally one would need to look further back for some explanations than for others.

Something of this approach is to be encountered in many areal studies. Clearly the method is one that presents great opportunity for ingenuity in presentation, and its success depends partly upon literary skill and partly upon the nature of the region described. As an example of the method we may take Ralph Brown's account of the Roswell region in New Mexico.49 Explanation is interwoven with description; and 'relic cultural forms' are discussed with due regard to the chronology of their origins. The headings of two successive sections speak for themselves. First we hear of'Inherited cultural features: "The ranches",' and then of the 'rise and decline of orcharding'. A brief final section provides a chronological summary of the various phases that have been discussed: livestock, fruit and, finally, diversified crops based upon irrigation, in which, we are told, 'cotton, at least momentarily, is supreme'. The study as a whole constitutes an ingenious presentation that deftly mingles the past with the present.

This kind of presentation may take the form of mapping the visible remains of the past in terms of the period from which they date; thus we may see to what extent the past still enters into the present scene. This is in some ways analogous to the method of those architectural plans that show the varying dates of different portions of a building or buildings. Suggestions along these lines were made by A. G. Ogilvie in his address in 1952 on 'the time element in geography'.50 This is the approach that lies behind J. W. Watson's account of 'relict geography in an urban community'. Concentrating upon relics of the past, it describes the present 'scene as part of what has gone before'.51

There is much to be said for the method of retrospective reference in all its variations. Some would regard it as the only true geographical method. Others would prefer to put first things first, and would point to the fact that the geography of a past age has frequently influenced that of the present day other than by leaving souvenirs of itself. The absence of a species of tree in a forest, where soil and climate should make it dominant, may well be due to an earlier phase of land utilization that has left no relict features except in a negative sense. To limit historical comment to visible features from the past may well result in an incomplete, or even a false, explanation.

If one pursued the idea of retrospective asides and parentheses to a logical conclusion, one could envisage a fourth mode of presentation - the combina-

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tion of a running geographical text with historical footnotes. When I light- heartedly suggested this theoretical possibility in 1952,52 I should have known that the method, or something very near it, had already been exemplified in Clifford M. Zierer's account of San Fernando near Los Angeles.53 The text, it is true, makes some retrospective reference, but the main bulk of the historical visualization of the area is contained in a series of fairly lengthy footnotes. Not everyone would wish to follow such a practice; but it is nevertheless good to have a demonstration of this kind to help forward our thinking on these matters.

A fifth mode of adding explanation to description is by means of cross- sections that succeed one another in reverse order, that is, that go backwards in time. It was a great French historian, Marc Bloch, who warned us that the order which a historian adopts for his inquiries need not necessarily correspond to the sequence of events.54 Bloch wrote of 'la methode regressive', and of proceeding from the known to the unknown, and of 'understanding the past by the present'. Reversing the geographer's argument he said that the present landscape furnished 'the best point of departure' for inquiry into rural history,55 and he spoke of 'each stage of the journey upstream to the headwaters of the past'.56 Some geographers have followed this method in their attempt to understand the present by the past, and they have followed it not only in their inquiries but also in their presentation of these inquiries. Such is the method of the account of part of Switzerland by H. D6rries57 and of that of the Middle Garonne region by Pierre Deffontaines.58 The method also enters into the account of medieval Burgundy by Andre Deleage59 and into the unpublished account of the Weald in the seventeenth century by J. L. M. Gulley.60

All these retrospective studies constitute so many interesting experiments in the art of presentation, and we are indebted to them for highlighting some of our problems. There may well be a case for describing a countryside before explaining how it came to be, but, on the other hand, it is not easy to keep on doing this in a sequence of retrospective cross-sections. The method certainly places many difficulties in the way of an ordered explanation of the present scene.

The sixth method of combining description with explanation - that of the present tense - was suggested by W. M. Davis in his elaborate paper of 1915 on 'The principles of geographical description'.61 Davis was occupied with the place of 'physiographic history' in description, but what he says about physical processes is also applicable to cultural processes; the place of both in descriptive writing involves somewhat similar methodological problems. After pointing out that 'elaborate explanations' make it 'difficult for the reader to hold his attention upon the geographical present', he proceeded to discuss the 'use of verbs in the present tense'. In quoting his remarks, the words in square brackets have been added:

Another expedient for the lessening of geological [and historical] distraction in physiographic [and geographic] descriptions may be noted. Inasmuch as geography is particularly concerned with the existing features

11


of the earth, the use of the present tense in geographical description is to be recommended. Experiment will show that the distraction caused by over- emphasis of past geological [and historical] processes in explanatory geographical descriptions may be much lessened if the past tense, in which the action of such processes is usually stated, is avoided and if the description is rephrased and simplified so that it may announce the existing result of past processes in the present tense; for by this simple device weight is laid on the geographical product of past geological [and historical] processes instead of on geological [and historical] processes themselves.

Not content with theoretical statement, Davis proceeded to give two descriptions of the Valdarno in the central Appennines of Italy - one a 'past-tense description'; and the other, a 'present-tense description'. They are well worth reading.

Here is certainly an intriguing and ingenious way of being 'indubitably geographic'. Many writers have followed the method either consciously or un- consciously; the knowledge of what has gone before, even if not explicitly expressed, has entered into their descriptions. But although W. M. Davis's suggestion is one to be borne in mind, some people might think that such a solution is a very naive one. It is possible to change tenses easily enough, but, in doing so, one does not change the fact that one must know what has gone before the 'present day'. W. M. Davis was too good a physiographer to ignore what had happened in the past. He even proposed a kind of amendment to his suggestion. 'The present-tense description may be made even more concise', he wrote, if we can assume that the processes of change 'have already been sys- tematically set forth', so that they may be referred to 'by implication' and not by 'explicit mention'. Such an arrangement might well bring us near to that of the 'introductory narrative' followed by 'retrospective reference'. The 'simple device' turns out after all to be but the old prescription.

In conclusion it must be said that this attempt to discuss the various methods of presentation certainly does not exhaust the possible ways in which description and explanation can be combined. The limits to such possibilities lie only in the vision and ingenuity of those who hazard the portrayal of an area. One method might suit one area better than another. One method might be more appropriate than another to the nature and scale of the portrayal that is envisaged. One method might be more or less attractive to a writer for reasons that lie not in the method itself, nor in the area described, but in the writer's mind and experience. At one level of appreciation, description alone ('mere description' as it has been called) must always hold a place in our attention; witness the great tradition of landscape painting. Yet one thing is clear: however we try to arrest it in pictures or in words, any scene is on the way to becoming something different, and is in the process of adding its quota to the explanation of some succeeding scene. Therein lies not only the desirability, as Lessing argued, but also the necessity, for a historical ingredient in geographical description.

12

THE PROBLEM OF GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION 13

NOTES

1 H. J. MACKINDER in the discussion following W. M. Davis's paper on 'The systematic description of land forms', Geographical Journal, 34 (1909), 300-26, on p. 320.

2 W. M. DAVIS, Ibid., 300. 3 G. E. LESSING, Laocoon, Nathan the Wise, Minna von Barnhelm (1766). Translated by W. A.

Steel and A. Dent, Everyman's Library (1930), 61, 63 and 74. 4 YI-Fu TUAN, 'Use of simile and metaphor in geographical descriptions', The Professional

Geographer, 9 (1957), 8-11. 5 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, Cosmos, translated by E. C. Otte, vol. 2 (1849), 438. See also vol. 1

(1844), 38. 6 JOHN MASEFIELD, So long to learn: chapters of an autobiography (1952), 169. 7 For the quotations that follow see SOMERSET MAUGHAM, Don Fernando (1st ed., 1935), collected

ed. (1950), 32, 35, 46, 52; and Preface to collected ed. of Liza of Lambeth (1934), xxi (1st ed., 1897). See also A writer's notebook (1949), 197-8.

8 FRANCIS GALTON, Inquiries into human faculty and its development (1st ed., 1883), Everyman's Library (1943), 57-79.

9 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, Cosmos, vol. 2, 371-2, 436-7. 10 PATRICK GEDDES, 'A great geographer: Elis6e Reclus, 1830-1905', Scottish Geographical

Magazine, 21 (1905), 490-6 and 548-55, on p. 494. 11 R. G. WARD, 'Captain Alexander Maconochie, R.N., K.H., 1787-1860', Geographical Journal,

126 (1960), 459-68. 12 The Times, Saturday, 13 March 1954. 13 The inscription on the title page of each of the six continental volumes says 'selected' by

F. D. HERBERTSON and 'edited' by A. J. HERBERTSON. In 1906 appeared a seventh volume called The British Empire, 'selected and edited by F. D. HERBERTSON'. Finally, in 1909, appeared an eighth volume called The British Isles, 'selected' by LETTICE JOWITT, and 'edited' by A. J. HERBERTSON.

14 MARGARET S. ANDERSON, Splendour of earth (1954), xxv. 15 J. K. WRIGHT, 'Terrae Incognitae: the place of the imagination in geography', Annals of the

Association of American Geographers, 37 (1947), 1-15. 16 H. C. PRINCE, 'The geographical imagination', Landscape, 11 (1962), 22-5. 17 For example, WILHELM VOLZ, 'Der Begriff des "Rhythmus" in der Geographie', Mitteilungen

der Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde, Leipzig, 1923-5 (1926), 8-41. 18 For example, EWALD BANSE, Landschaft und Seele: Neue Wege der Untersuchung und Gestaltung

(Miinchen, 1928). 19 VAUGHAN CORNISH, 'The grouping of forms in natural scenery', Geographical Journal, 68

(1926), 402-12. See also 'Harmonies of scenery', Geography, 14 (1928), 275-83. 20 FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND, The heart of nature, or the quest for natural beauty (1921). See the

review by D. W. FRESHFIELD in Geographical Journal, 58 (1921), 454-6. 21 JOSEPH WIMMER, Historische Landschaftskunde (Innsbruck, 1885), 9. 22 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, Cosmos, vol. 2, 440-57, especially pp. 443 and 451. 23 E. H. GOMBRICH, Art and Illusion (1960), reviewed by RICHARD WOLLHEIM in The Observer,

Sunday, 3 April 1960. 24 DAVID LOWENTHAL, 'Geography, experience, and imagination: towards a geographical

epistemology', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 51 (1961), 241-60, on p. 251. 25 For example, M. D. VERON, 'Perception, attention and consciousness', The Advancement of

Science, 16 (1959), 111-23. 26 G. P. MARSH, Man and nature: or, physical geography as modified by human action (1864), 10. 27 CARL 0. SAUER, 'The education of a geographer', Annals of the Association of American

Geographers, 46 (1956), 287-99, on p. 292. 28 See the interesting comments by EWART JOHNS in 'Langstone Rock: an experiment in the art

of landscape description', Geography, 45 (1960), 176-82. 29 F. E. BRYANT, On the limits of descriptive writing, apropos of Lessing's Laocoon (Ann Arbor,

1906), Preface. 30 EDWARD A. ACKERMAN, 'Geographic training, wartime research, and immediate professional

objectives', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 35 (1945), 121-43, on p. 129. 31 In FRITZ STERN (ed.), The varieties of history (New York, 1956), 55. 32 In FRITZ STERN (ed.)., op. cit., 379. 33 JOHN L. MYRES, Geographical history in Greek lands (1953), 74.

14 THE PROBLEM OF GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION

34 ARNOLD GUYOT, The earth and man (2nd ed., 1854), 1. 35 A. HETTNER, 'Die Entwicklung der Geographie im 19. Jahrhundert', Geographische Zeitschrift,

4 (1898), 305-20. 36 The quotations in this paragraph are from G. E. Lessing, Laocoin, Nathan the Wise, Minna

von Barnhelm (1766). Translated by W. A. Steel and A. Dent, Everyman's Library (1930), 79, 59, 60, 64, 67-8, 68-9.

37 V. C. FINCH, 'Written structures for presenting the geography of regions', Annals of the Associa- tion of American Geographers, 24 (1934), 113-222, on p. 117.

38 DERWENT WHITTLESEY, 'The horizon of geography', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 35 (1945), 1-36, on p. 32.

39 DERWENT WHITTLESEY, 'Sequent occupance', Annals of the Association of American Geo- graphers, 19 (1929), 162-5.

40 DERWENT WHITTLESEY, 'New England', being a contribution to 'Round Table on problems in cultural geography', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 27 (1937), 169.

41 R. E. DODGE, 'The interpretation of sequent occupance', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 28 (1938), 233-7.

42 DERWENT WHITTLESEY, 'The horizon of geography', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 35 (1945), 1-36, on p. 32.

43 DERWENT WHITTLESEY, ibid., on pp. 31-2. 44 FRANKLIN C. ERICKSON, 'The tobacco belt of North Carolina', Economic Geography, 21 (1945),

58-61. 45 LAUREN C. POST, 'The rice country of south-western Louisiana', Geographical Review, 30 (1940),

574-90. 46 GEORGE A. STOKES, 'Lumbering and western Louisiana cultural landscapes', Annals of the

Association of American Geographers, 47 (1957), 250-67. 47 DERWENT WHITTLESEY, 'New England', op. cit., 169. 48 V. C. FINCH, 'Written structures for presenting the geography of regions', Annals of the Associa-

tion of American Geographers, 24 (1934), 113-122, on p. 120. 49 RALPH H. BROWN, 'A southwestern oasis: the Roswell region, New Mexico', Geographical

Review, 26 (1936), 610-19. 50 A. G. OGILVIE, 'The time-element in geography', Transactions and Papers, 1952, Institute of

British Geographers, 18 (1953), 1-15. 51 J. W. WATSON, 'Relict geography in an urban community: Halifax, Nova Scotia', being chap. 6

(110-43) of R. MILLER and J. W. WATSON (eds.), Geographical essays in memory of Alan G. Ogilvie (1959).

52 H. C. DARBY, 'On the relations of geography and history', Transactions and Papers, 1953, Institute of British Geographers, 19 (1954), 1-11, on p. 11.

53 CLIFFORD M. ZIERER, 'San Fernando - A type of southern Californian town', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 24 (1934), 1-28.

54 MARC BLOCH, The historian's craft (1954), 43-7. 55 MARC BLOCH in a review of A. MEYNIER'S Massif Central (1931) in Annals d'histoire economi-

que et sociale (1936), 319. 56 MARC BLOCH, The historian's craft (1954), 46. 57 H. DORRIES, 'Zur Entwicklung der Kulturlandschaft im Nord-Schweizerischen Alpenvorland',

Mitteilungen der Geographisches Gesellschaft Hamburg, vol. 39 (1928), 108-202. 58 PIERRE DEFFONTAINES, Les hommes et leurs travaux dans les pays de la Moyenne Garonne

(Lille, 1932). 59 A. DELEAGE,La vie economique etsociale de la Bourgogne dans le haut Moyen Age, 3 vols. (Macon,

1941). 60 J. L. M. GULLEY, 'The Wealden landscape in the early seventeenth century and its antecedents'.

Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1960. See also J. L. M. GULLEY, 'The retrospective approach in historical geography', Erdkunde, 15 (1961), 306-9.

61 W. M. DAVIS, 'The principles of geographical description', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 5 (1915), 61-105. The quotations that follow are from pp. 86-9. For similar views see W. M. Davis, 'The systematic description of land forms', Geographical Journal, 34 (1909), 300-26, on p. 305.

darby (1962) the problem of geographical description

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