Stewart states that the geography of Middle-earth deliberately pits the good West against the evil East; John Magoun, writing in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, concurs, stating that Middle-earth has a fully expressed moral geography. The peoples of Middle-earth vary from the hobbits of The Shire in the Northwest, evil Easterlings in the East, and imperial sophistication and decadence in the South. Magoun explains that Gondor is both virtuous, being West, and has problems, being South; Mordor in the Southeast is hellish, while Harad in the extreme South regresses into hot savagery.