although many places remained unknown and unexplored by westerners – including the Australasian continent, much of central Africa, the Amazon rainforest, the American interior, Antarctica and the Himalayan peaks – charting these places had become a question that began with the word ‘when’, not ‘if’ or ‘how’. The line from Magellan and Elcano’s circumnavigation to Captain Cook’s arrival in Australia, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary’s ascent of Mount Everest and our current age of satellite surveys and Google Earth was long, but it was direct.
