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Royal Geographical Society, Nov. n.-Major-General Sir H. C. Rawlinson, president, in the chair. The President, in his inaugural address, recapitulated the leading incidents which have occurred in the exploration of Africa since June, at which time we were in receipt merely of a brief telegraphic announcement that Mr. Stanley had arrived at Zanzibar with despatches, having left Livingstone alone and well at Uoyanyembe; and stated that, as the Society honestly consider Mr. Stanley's journey to Lake Tanganyika to be in its results the most impoitant geographical achievement of the year, they feel that, in awarding Mm their medal, they are only discharging their strict duty, while at the same time they are doing honour to Livingstone and promoting the great end of African discovery. The President then passed on to the history of the Society's own Relief Expedition, touching which he said:-“Much disappointment was felt at the abrupt termination of this expedition. The committee of the Geographical Council charged with the management of the Search and Relief Fund, after a most patient investigation, delivered two reports to the subscribers, the purport of which was that they disapproved of the conduct of Lieutenant Dawson in breaking up the expedition, and that they attributed it to a lamentable error of judgment that he did not carry on to the Doctor, as supplementary to Stanley's relief, a supply of arms, instruments, medicines, and other, articles of which be' manifestly stood in need. The judgment delivered by the com-r mittee has since been greatly fortified by“letters written by Dr. Livingstone on July 1st, in which, in answer to his son's letters from Zanzibar, he deplores the break-up of the expedition, showing how valuable would have been to him the arrival of the officers at Unyanyembe, and he proposed subsequently to have utilised their services. At the same time, it is only fair to Lieutenant Dawson to say that no imputation whatever rests upon his courage or his honour. Let it be understood, once for all, that there is not the remotest ground for questioning the accuracy of Mr. Stanley's statement. It is positively certain that Stanley and Livingstone met at Ujiji this time last year, that they travelled on an exploring journey round the northern end of Lake Tanganyika, and subsequently came down together to Unyamyembe, where the Doctor still was at the date of his last despatches.“Referring to the sufferings undergone by Livingstoue, the President.said, “it is not therefore surprising that, while smarting under his losses and injuries, he should have reflected with some bitterness on Dr. Kirk, the Acting-Consul at Zanzibar, who was more or less concerned in sending off the supplies, and in selecting the agents to be employed.“After alluding to the complete reconciliation which it is hoped has now been effected between Livingstone and Kirk, the president at some length entered into Livingstone's geographical researches, and arrived at these conclusions:-'' There can be no reasonable doubt that this great water-system of Central Africa belongs to the Congo and not to the Nile. The proofs of the identity of the Lualaba and the Congo, derived from a comparison of height-measurements, of volume of water, of the periodical rains and rise of the rivers, &c. have been put together very clearly in a paper by Dr. Behm, which has just appeared in the current number of Petermann's 'jMittheilungen,' and many arguments arising from local information, as well as from coincidences of natural history and ethnology, might be added in corroboration. The only impediment, indeed, to a full and clear understanding on this point is the remarkable fact that, although Livingstone had followed down the gradual slope of the Lualaba from the high plateau where it rises, 5,000 or 6,000 feet above the sea-level, to a point where the barometer gave an eleva tion of only 2,000 feet-that is to a point depressed 1,000 feet below the parallel Nile basin to the eastward; and although the constant trending of the waters to the west haunted him with misgivings, still he clung tenaciously to his old belief that he must be on the track of the Nile, and even speculated on the possibility of the great river he was pursuing debouching by the Bahr-el-Ghazal. It must be borne in mind, however, that Livingstone in his African solitude had no knowledge of Schweinfurth's discoveries. He had no idea that one, or perhaps two, watersheds intervened between the Lualaba and the head-waters of the Bahr-el-Ghazal; nor does he seem to have been aware that his great river at Nyangwe contained 19 times-the volume of water contributed by the western affluent of the White Nile. When this revelation breaks on him, it is not too much to suppose that he will abandon his Nile theory, and rest satisfied with the secondary honour-if indeed it be secondary-of having discovered and traced the upper course of the Congo, which is emphatically called by the natives ' the great river' of Africa.“The president then spoke of the “Livingstone Congo Expedition,“to which we refer in another column. "The deputation of Sir Bartle Frere on a mission to Zanzibar for the suppression of the slave trade, of which Livingstone may hear before he leaves the vicinity of Lake Tanganyika, will be to him an event of the intensest interest, and may thus have an important influence on his future movements. It is not impossible that Lieut. Cameron might fall in with Baker's flotilla on the Albert Nyanza, as reports have reached us, though not as yet officially confirmed, that Sir S. Baker had pushed on during last summer with a flying column from Gondokoro to the point where the Nile leaves the Nyanza, and had made arrangements for his steamer and boats to be brought up in carts."
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Societies and Academies . Nature 7, 38–40 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/007038a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/007038a0