442 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON'S ADDRESS— AFRICA. [May 25, 1857. 



besi and Lake Ngami of S. Africa. So much is this the case, that 

 Barth suggests how boats may reach the lake in ascending from the 

 sea.* 



Independently of the impediments which the climate and its 

 diseases offer to the research of Europeans, the other great obstacles 

 presented to the enterprise of Barth and his companions have not, 

 I apprehend, been sufficiently appreciated. All along the broad 

 zone stretching across Central Africa, between 11° and 5° of n. lat., 

 there prevails more or less a continuous and merciless warfare be- 

 tween the Mahomedans and the Pagans, which presents the most 

 appalling checks to the traveller proceeding from the territory of 

 any Mahomedan prince to whom he may be accredited. For whilst 

 Livingstone has demonstrated the practicability of traversing vast 

 tracts of Southern Africa, occupied by people speaking various dialects 

 of the same language (none of them being Mahomedans), such facility 

 of intercourse is forbidden through the region north of the equator. 

 There, a solitary traveller, scantily supplied with means, has to 

 cross this belt by proceeding through hostile tribes engaged in san- 

 guinary warfare, and is at the mercy of every petty tribe and 

 barbarous chief whose district he has to traverse. 



AVhilst in regard to Overweg, who, it appears, kept very few 

 notes, we have to regret that nearly all the important information 

 he had accumulated perished with him, I am bound to record that 

 Dr. Barth deserves all praise for making and preserving detailed 

 records, when struggling against depressing illnesses and great 

 poverty. 



From what we know of the efforts made by himself and his asso- 

 ciate, it is, indeed, too manifest that the progress of discovery in 

 Africa, south of Lake Chad, can be only very slow and gradual. 



Such, then, are the difficulties from which Barth has escaped, and 

 of which he is now rendering us a vivid and detailed account — such 

 is the country in which Vogel and his faithful attendant. Corporal 

 Maguire, were left. My predecessor has recorded in his last and 

 only Address, what progress Vogel had made after leaving Barth in 

 1854. Foiled in his attempt to reach Adamawa, the route between 

 Hamarrawa and Yole being occupied by warlike bodies. Dr. Vogel 

 had already determined by astronomical observations the real site 

 of the important town of Yakoba, situated on a rocky plateau 2500 

 feet above the sea. Eetuming from Hamarrawa to Gombe, through 



* Vol. iii. pp. 202, 221. 



