1868. | Geography. 89 
not yet reached us. In Palestine the exploration under Lieutenant 
Warren, R.E., is continuing with increased success. Of late the 
principal attention has been directed to Jerusalem, where the 
improved feeling manifested by the authorities and people, now they 
discover that no irreverence is intended, and see that the Arabs 
under British superintendence conduct themselves with regularity 
and steadiness, has given facility for investigating many localities 
hitherto inaccessible to Europeans. A portion of the site of the 
temple and a few other spots have yielded curious results to the 
burrowings of the workmen, whilst the Lieutenant and his assist- 
ant, Sergeant Birtles, have penetrated beneath the earth up and 
down and along passages of all sizes, from halls of 200 feet in 
height, to drains through which a moderate sized man could just 
crawl. The expedition was nearly coming to an untimely end for 
want of funds, but of course this only had to be known and under- 
stood, when sufficient to keep them at work for some little time 
longer was immediately forthcoming. It is hoped that before 
long a tolerably complete plan of the ancient city will be possible, 
when the interminable disputes of architects and historians who 
have never been on the spot, and of travellers who know nothing of 
history and architecture, will be forcibly stopped, and conjecture will 
give place to certainty. In the meantime we would urge upon all 
interested in such subjects, the propriety of assisting im a work where 
every shilling expended shows some definite result. 
Abyssinia swallows up all the interest that can be afforded for 
geographical purposes at the present time. Mr. Robert Lowe com- 
plained in his lecture on education at Edinburgh, that more edu- 
cated men could tell him where Halicarnassus was than where 
Gondar is. There is not much fear that this ignorance will last 
long. No doubt educated men, Members of Parliament, and many 
of her Majesty's Ministers, too, know much more about the geo- 
graphy of Asia Minor than they do of Abyssinia, but they only 
share in the knowledge and ignorance of the world in general, and 
of geographers in particular. People naturally know more of places 
where great events have taken place or great men have lived, than 
of those localities where hereafter something is to happen. The 
new maps of the country over which our armies are travelling con- 
tain, no doubt, the best information to be obtained (and we would 
especially point to Mr. Wyld’s lately published map), but in these 
there are immense tracts of land with scarcely a name, perhaps a 
river put in tentatively, and a camel route crossing an otherwise 
unmarked district of hundreds of miles. Promises have been given 
that scientific men shall accompany the expedition, and all the 
knowledge at the command of the Royal Geographical Society has 
been employed by the Government. Several books of course have 
been published on a subject so generally interesting. Besides Sir 
