Before we start a voyage, we usually try to find out more or less definitely where we are bound and how we are supposed to get there. I happen to have the "Concise Oxford dictionary" on my desk and that will do as well as any other. The word I am looking for appears at the bottom of Page 344. edition 1912. "Geography: the science of the earth's surface, form, physical features, natural and political divisions, climate, productions and population." I could not possibly hope to do better, but I still stress some of the aspects of the case at the expenses of others,  because I intend to place man in the centre of the stage. This book of mine will not merely discuss the surface of the earth and its physical features, together with its political and natural boundaries. I would rather call it a study of man in search of food and shelter and leisure for himself and for his family and an attempt to his background or has reshaped his physical surroundings in order to be comfortable and well nourished and happy with his limited strength. Among the two million human beings in the world, there is of course the widest possible range for all sorts of experiments of an economic and social and cultural nature. It seems me that those experiments deserve our attention before anything else. For a mountain is after all merely a mountain until it has been seen by human eyes and has been walked on by human feet and until its and slopes and valleys have been occupied and fought over and planted by a dozen generation of hungry settlers. The Atlantic Ocean was just as wide and deep and as wet and salty before the beginning of the 13th century as after, but it took the human touch to make it what it is today--a bridge between the New World and the Old, the highway for the commerce between East and West. For thousands of years the endless Russian plains lay ready to offer their abundant harvest to whoever should take the trouble to sow the first grain. But the aspect of that country today would he a very different one if the hand of a German or a Frank, rather than that of a Slav, had guided the iron-pointed stick that plowed the first furrows  . The island of Nippon would shake and quake just as continually, whether they happened to be settled by Japanese or by the Tasmanian race, but in the latter case they would hardly be able to feed 60,000,000 people. Generally speaking, I have paid more attention to the purely "human" side of geography than to the commercial problems which are so important in a day and age devoted to mass production. Which of the following is implied about the Atlantic Ocean?
It is wide, deep, wet and salty. Human touch makes it important. There is a bridge over it. The highway is busy there.