The encyclopaedic trend, associated with the collection of new information about the world, particularly arras little known to the residents of western Europe and North America. Although the great age of discovery was over, and by the late nineteenth century much of the world had been visited by Anglo-Saxon explorers, there were still vast tracts, notably in Africa, which if not terra incognita were extremely empty on contemporary maps. Indeed, at the beginning of geography’s modern period much of the North America continent itself remained to be settled by permanent farms.