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THE

AFRICAN REPOSITORY.

Vol. xxxix.] WASHINGTON, JANUARY, 1863

[No. 1.

ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.

ANNIVERSARY, MAY 26, 1862.

ADDRESS BY

THE LORD ASHBURTON, PRESIDENT.

Among the obituary notices of this address, a noble and just tribute is paid to the late Prince Consort, a vice patron of the Society. "His vigilant eye, says the speaker, was not confined to the science of Geography alone; it extended to every science, every pursuit which could in any way contribute to the welfare of our fellow men. Our grief for the irreparable loss we have ourselves sustained has been still further intensified by our sympathy with that great lady, our Queen and governor, in whom we glory, on whom we have concentrated all that we have of respect, admiration, and love."

Very respectful and mournful mention is made of Thomas William Atkinson, the Siberian traveler; of Captain Walter Colquhoun Grant, vice consul for some years at Trebizond, and afterwards Consul at Damascus; of James Ormiston M'William, M. D., T. R. S., Chief Medical Director in the Niger Expedition of 1841, and of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Wolf, whose name is so intimately connected with Eastern travels, especially for the purpose of proclaiming the Gospel to the Jews, Mohamedans, and Pagans. He traveled in Messopotamia, Persia, Teffles, and the Crimea, incessantly preaching at every town and village he came to. From 1831 to 1834, Dr. Wolf proceeded to search for the Ten Tribes. A full account of all these wanderings, and of his second journey to Bokhara, in order, if possible, to effect the liberation of Colonel

Stoddard and Captain Connelly, as also of his visit to the United States, will be found in his works."

From this address we select the following passages in regard to Africa of the Admiralty surveys:

"AFRICA. On the west coast of Africa the river Volta has been explored as far as the first rapids, at about fifty miles from its mouth, the Ogun for forty miles from Lagos to within four miles of Abeokuta, and the St. Nicholas and Brass branches for twenty-five miles from the sea; and the sketch-map of each has been published at the Admiralty. In the Cape Colony, Mr. Francis Skead, R. N., is engaged on the coast near Hout Bay. In the early part of the year he accompanied Mr. May, R. N., in Dr. Livingstone's new steamer to the Zambesi, and made an improved sketch of the five mouths of that river, and more correctly determined their position, while Mr. May proceeded with Dr. Livingstone and Bishop Mackenzie to the river Rovuma, and explored it for thirty miles from its mouth, which was as far as the falling water would allow them to ascend; the sketch of this river, on the scale of one inch to a mile, has been published. In the Red Sea a plan of Dissee Island and harbor, and Commander Mansell's resurvey of the Strait of Jubal, with the Ashraffi reef and islet, have been engraved; and it is gratifying to be enabled to add that the intelligent Viceroy of Egypt, His Highness Said Pasha, has caused three lights to be established to facilitate the navigation of that narrow sea; one on Zafarana point, already lighted; one on the Ashraffi reef, at the southern entrance of the Gulf of Suez, which will be lighted shortly; and a third on the Dædalus reef, which is to be lighted towards the close of the year."

The following statement shows how African travelers have been occupied during the year preceding this meeting:

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It is long since tidings have reached us from either of our two medallists, Livingstone and Speke, in whose explorations our Society takes especial interest, both from the brilliancy of their former achievements and the importance of their present undertakings. Just before the anniversary of 1861, we heard of Livingstone's departure from the Zambesi, in his small steamer, to examine the Rovuma river, and ascertain whether any basis existed for the often-expressed belief that the river would afford a convenient and a neutral highway to the vast regions of the Niassa, independent of the complications of Portuguese territorial claims. The result of his examination reached us shortly afterwards; it was far from satisfactory. His steamer of light draught was unable to ascend the Rovuma for more than a few miles, before it became necessary to return hastily, else she would have been left grounded by the falling waters until the ensuing rainy season. Livingstone then revisited the Zambesi, and established the members of the

University Mission, in the healthiest quarters he could find, near the banks of the Shire.

“We have heard nothing whatever of Speke since our last anniversary, except a fragment of news, which is exceedingly satisfactory, though it left him at a stage and a date little removed from where he last wrote to us. It will be remembered that he had then described himself in trouble. The desert of Ugogo was peculiarly parched in 1861; he and the natives had difficulty in obtaining food, and a large number of his porters had deserted and left him. We have since learnt, through a native merchant who had interchanged a few passing words with him, that Speke was accompanied by a fresh body of porters, that he had extricated himself from the desert of Ugogo, and was traveling rapidly, and in excellent force on the way to Unianyembe.

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Provisions will not fail him if he emerges this summer at Gondakora on the White Nile, for by aid of the funds liberally subscribed by many fellows of this Society, and by Mr. Consul Petherick's furtherance, boats laden with grain were dispatched by that gentleman, under a proper escort, from Khartum up the White Nile, early in this year.

"The present condition of the White Nile is such as to grieve deeply those who believe commerce to be the most effectual agent in civilizing Africa. Fifteen years ago the natives along its shores were mostly inoffensive and hospitable to travelers; but the stream of trade that has yearly passed along it, uncontrolled by any moral supervision, and mostly in the hands of reckless adventurers and lawless crews, has driven the numerous tribes along its banks into so general and deep an hostility against strangers, that the White Nile cannot now be ascended except by an armed force of considerable magnitude.

The hopes we entertained last year of an increased knowledge of the Upper White Nile, through the independent labors of M. Lejean and Dr. Peney, have failed us, owing to the illness and return of the former gentleman, and the premature death of the latter. Dr. Peney did some good service to geography before he died; he traveled westward from Gondakora for sixty miles, and there apparently struck the penultimate stage of Petherick's former expedition. If this be the case-and the identity of the names of the places and tribes, and the geographical features leave hardly room for doubt—an enormous rectification becomes necessary in the estimated extent and direction of Petherick's itinerary. Peney also traveled above Gondakora, through the cataracts, to nearly the furtherest point of which we have even a rumor, and he places his goal at about one degree south of Gondakora, and on absolutely the same meridian.

"The determination of the altitude and snowy summit of Kilimanjaro, by the Baron von der Decken and his geological associate, Mr. Thornton, has gladdened African geographers, who felt it was little creditable to their science that so interesting a subject should remain year after year open to question. It is a pleasure

to find that the wanderings of missionaries, solely in the pursuit of their calling, should have led them here, as it has often done elsewhere, to be the first discoverers of new lands and pioneers to more accurate research.

"An elaborate report on the dominions of Zanzibar, by Lieut. Colonel Rigby, has been published in the Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government. It appears from subsequent accounts that the condition of that island has lately fallen into a very disturbed state.

"On the coast of Africa, opposite to Kilimanjaro, Capt. Burton, our ever active medallist, and now H. M. Consul at Fernando Po, has materially contributed to a survey of the large creeks and river-mouths, which form a characteristic feature of those shores, and in the knowledge of which we are unduly deficient. We hear also of his ascent of the lofty Cameroon Mountain, and shall doubtless receive from him a detailed account of that extinct volcano, which in its origin, latitude, and proximity to the sea, as well as by its prominence, holds a position on the West Coast, curiously corresponding to that of Kilimanjaro on the east of Africa.

"The French have exerted themselves with energy in reconnoitering the tributaries of the great bay or estuary of the Gaboon, all of which take their rise in the flanks of the neighboring mountain chain through which the Ogobai, familiar to us by the writings of Du Chaillu, bursts its way, in its course from a more distant interior.

"Numerous explorations have been made in Senegambia and in the northwestern Sahara. The travels of Boo Moghdad are, perhaps, the most important. He left St. Louis on the Senegal, and passed to Mogadore, on the coast of Marocco. Lambert's journey to Timbo is also of great interest. Duveyrier has returned to Algiers with large stores of information gathered in the Sahara, which he is preparing for publication, and which African geographers await with keen interest. We are sorry to hear that that energetic young traveler is suffering very severely from the effect of his many journeys.

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Heuglin's expedition in search of information bearing on Vogel's fate, in Wadai, has made some advance in his necessarily circuitous route. He landed at Massowa, and spent some months in Abyssinia, awaiting the favorable season for onward travel. His researches in that country have been original and minute, especially with regard to the geology and hypsometry of its northern borderland.

It

"Our medallist Barth is engaged in the publication of a work of paramount importance to African ethnologists, namely, an elaborate collection of vocabularies of the tribes of Central Africa. is mainly from a comparison of dialects that we may hope to unravel some portion of the mutual relations and early history of the various races which inhabit that large portion of the earth's