This is an account of the great burst of scientific exploration in the 19th century: the search for the North-West passage; the penetration of the Australian outback; and the hunt for the sources of the Nile, Niger, Amazon and Brahmaputra. There are the individual stories of personalities such as Charles Darwin, ALfred Wallace, Henry Bates and Richard Spruce, but the focal point of the book is how these journeys were linked to wider issues: the growth of knowledge; the spread of Empire; the image of the wild; and the great Victorian questions of the creation, origins and ascent of man.