Explore or You'll Never Know Exploration—going boldly where no person of your culture has ever gone before, to bring back stories and artifacts, maps and navigational information, obscure diseases, and treasure. Why do we do it? Because it's built into our brains. Let us go now, thou and I, exploring.

Here's an expedition to start with:

Central Asia, 1897: Sven Hedin, in his thirty-second year, was already an experienced explorer of the remotest reaches of central Asia. This story of his expedition of the late 1890's was written from an interview with him conducted by R. H. Sherard and published in McCLURE'S MAGAZINE for December, 1897. It included a dozen pictures of Dr. Hedin and the things he saw; we've scanned in the images and present them here to you in such a way that they are much easier to examine now than they were when they originally appeared in the magazine pages. You can see high-resolution copies of the illustrations (photos, maps, drawings) by clicking on the images in your browser. Please note that the high-resolution versions will be quite large on your screen and may take a while to download.