1864.] Introduction. 8) 
Geographical Exploration, a subject of great interest in all literary, 
scientific, and political circles. 
A new era is dawning upon the profession of the traveller, and 
those attributes which found their embodiment in the fictitious but 
far-famed German Baron Miinchausen, are fast giving place to 
scrupulous care and accuracy in the description of places, and great 
modesty in the narrative of personal adventures. 
This change is due in part to the general diffusion of know- 
ledge amongst the masses, which enables men more readily to detect 
error and exaggeration; partly to the progress of the photographic art,* 
which is incapable of misrepresentation, and in a large measure to that 
wholesome competition amongst travellers themselves, which soon 
leads to the contradiction or verification of strange and novel dis- 
coveries. Amongst those who have earned for themselves a reputation 
for bravery and endurance, and who at the same time set an example of 
the virtue of modesty in the traveller, are the discoverers of the Source 
of the Nile, and the explorers of Central Australia. 
It would be impossible for us even to refer to the adventures of 
Speke and Grant on their journey from Zanzibar to Lake Nyanza, where 
the source of the Nile was discovered, and thence down the great 
river into civilized Africa. Their discoveries have been aptly com- 
pared by Mr. Crawfurd to those of Columbus, and the practical 
benefits which are likely to follow them through the introduction or 
improved cultivation of useful products of the soil, and the civilization 
of barbarous peoples, will, in this case as in that of Burke and Wills, 
recompense the world for the loss of many of its best sons in the ser- 
vice of exploration. 
But whilst we give a meed of praise to these adventurous tra- 
vellers, we consider it right also to inquire whether or not the 
governments of civilized Europe, and more especially our own legis- 
lators, are bearing their share of the burden, and extending a fair 
amount of support to those who risk their lives in the cause of 
civilization. 
This question will be answered best by a reference to what is 
passing in those regions of Western Equatorial Africa which have so 
long been the seat of the slave-trade and of human sacrifices. His 
Majesty the King of Dahomey must begin to have an elevated 
notion of his own importance, as traveller after traveller, and one re- 
presentative after another from the Courts of Europe, solicits his 
permission to visit him, and to remonstrate with him upon the errors 
* No traveller can plead the excuse that photography is difficult of application, 
after what was accomplished by Professor Piazzi Smyth, at an altitude of 10,700 ft. 
above the sea level, during the Teneriffe expedition. 
