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GEOGRAPHICAL PROGRESS AND DISCOVERY. 



avowed purpose to bring their action against 

 slavery within the limits of the Constitution 

 and the laws, instead of proceeding in antago- 

 nism to that instrument and denouncing the 

 Union formed under it. They saw the fatal 

 mistake early made by Mr. Garrison, and avoid- 

 ed it. The Liberty party grew. Some of its 

 members were seen in legislative bodies. Dis- 

 tinguished editors threw crumbs to it ; others 

 espoused it. Its Senators took seats in Con- 

 gress. Its candidates appeared for the Presi- 

 dency, and, though with no hope of an election 

 for themselves, they decided which one of the 

 other candidates should be elected. The most 

 important subsequent events are to be found 

 in the preceding volumes of this work. Wiser 

 and shrewder men than Mr. Garrison had 

 taken the conduct of this crusade into their 

 hands. 



During his life Mr. Garrison made four or 

 five visits to England for antislavery purposes, 

 and was received with much distinction. On 

 one of these occasions the Duchess of Suther- 

 land, the Mistress of the Robes a kind of fe- 

 male prime minister invited him to sit for his 

 portrait, and subsequently placed it among the 

 pictures of nobles and statesmen that adorn 

 the walls of Stafford House. While abroad in 

 1867 the Duke of Argyll, John Bright, John 

 Stuart Mill, Earl Russell, and other prominent 

 persons, gave him a banquet in London ; while 

 the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, in obedience 

 to a vote of the civil authorities, conferred 

 upon him the freedom of the metropolis of 

 Scotland. 



In 1843 Mr. Garrison was chosen President 

 of the American Antislavery Society. He 

 held the position till the anniversary meeting 

 in May, 1865, when, the war being over and 

 the negroes free, he counseled the dissolution 

 of the Society on the ground that its work was 

 done, insisting that an American antislavery 

 society was a misnomer after American slavery 

 had ceased to exist. He failed to carry his 

 point, and thereupon he resigned the office of 

 President. On the same grounds he suspended 

 the publication of the " Liberator" at the close 

 of the war. Its work was done. 



GEOGRAPHICAL PROGRESS AND DIS- 

 COVERY. The largest geographical areas yet 

 unknown which now invite exploration, ex- 

 cepting the regions surrounding the poles, are 

 found in the central portions of the continent 

 of Asia and in the interior of Africa. The 

 greater part of New Guinea, the second largest 

 island in the world, is also a terra incognita,, 

 which still incloses secrets of great probable 

 importance to commerce and to science alike. 

 The most important accessions to geographical 

 science to be chronicled are the fruits of two 

 national expeditions into the interior of Africa 

 from the western coast. The advance from this 

 side is notoriously more arduous than from the 

 eastern coast; and both the French and Por- 

 tuguese expeditions have encountered obstacles 

 and dangers of the most trying description. 



The former has settled the question of the 

 source of the Ogowe, finding its basin to be of 

 much smaller extent than was supposed. The 

 latter traversed the continent by a south- 

 easterly route from Angola to the Transvaal, 

 passing through the regions in which Living- 

 stone took up his abode, and obtained a solu- 

 tion, which, however, can hardly yet be accept- 

 ed as final, of a hydrographical question of 

 equal importance, that of the discharge of the 

 great river Cubango. The geographical data. 

 obtained by the Portuguese explorer are more 

 complete, and probably more trustworthy, than 

 those of the other transcontinental travelers. 

 D'Albertis, the naturalist whose devotion to 

 science led him to pass many years as a hermit 

 among the savages of New Guinea, and who 

 has contributed more than any other traveler 

 to our knowledge of the interior regions of that 

 strange tropical island, is able since his return 

 to Europe to furnish a detailed and most in- 

 teresting narration of his experiences and ob- 

 servations in geography, natural history, and 

 ethnology, in all which branches he is an acute 

 and able investigator. From the new Russian 

 possessions in Asia a dozen or more expedi- 

 tions composed of learned and experienced 

 specialists are now sent out into the unexplored 

 regions of Central Asia every year, nearly ev- 

 ery one of which has something to contribute 

 on its return to the knowledge of these vast 

 and interesting regions. The very thorough 

 geodetic and topographical surveys of the 

 English approach this same wide domain of 

 unexplored territory from the south. Great 

 interest is felt in the lands of Thibet, highly 

 interesting from geographical, naturalistic, and 

 ethnographical reasons, and of even greater 

 importance from a commercial standpoint. 

 This country, whose peculiar natural products 

 are of exceeding value, has been completely 

 closed to the outside world, and is still, by the 

 jealous and exclusive restrictions of the Chinese 

 territorial government; but there are indica- 

 tions that these rigid barriers, which can not 

 possibly be long upheld, will soon give way to 

 the inevitable progress of civilized commerce. 

 The achievements of the most striking and 

 transcendent interest, however, have been 

 within the last couple of years, and promise to 

 be in the immediate future, in the domain of 

 Arctic discovery. The accessions in this fas- 

 cinating field for research have not been of a 

 scientific character solely. The icy regions of 

 the north which have been unlocked to the 

 world by the efforts of courageous polar navi- 

 gators yield many products which are highly 

 prized in the commerce of the world, and which 

 the labors of these hardy pioneers will have 

 rendered soon more abundantly accessible. 

 The vast alluvial lowlands of Northern Asia 

 possess an excellent soil for cereal crops, and 

 perhaps in the not distant future the enormous 

 plains of Siberia and the prairies of the Hudson 

 Bay Territory, two regions which have been 

 looked upon as hopeless frozen wildernesses, 



