The Rcdicttkcniitf/: Scientific K,,'/>/<>nitioi, 



fellows, and at the suggestion of the latter, Galton consulted the 

 officials of the Society as to his journey. He was elected a menilT 

 in the spring of 1850 and thus begun his relationship to the Royal 

 Geographical which lasted so many years. According to the minutes 

 of the Society Galton submitted, on March 25, 1850, a scheme for his 

 journey to the South African lake and the route he proposed to take. 

 This paper was not published in the Society's Journal and it has not 

 been possible to obtain access to the papers of that period in the Society's 

 archives'. The matter is probably of small importance, for had Galton 

 gone up from the Cape to Lake Ngami, he would have found Living- 

 stone already at work exploring the district he had thought of, and 

 it was probably therefore providential that on his arrival at the Cape 

 he found himself cut off from Ngami by the great trek of the emigrant 

 Boers, who had "wrested the whole breadth of the habitable country 

 north of the Orange River" and cut off all communication northward. 

 After some doubts as to proceeding to Lake Ngami from the Portu- 

 guese settlements on the east coast, Galton determined on starting 

 from Walfisch Bay on the west and crossing Damaraland. This roughly 

 enabled him to fill in the unknown district between Alexander's west 

 and east line, Livingstone's Lake Ngami work and the Portuguese 

 possessions on the west coast, that is to say the upper half of the 

 present German South-west African colonies. The account of Galton's 

 journey was published by Murray in 1853", and a new edition by 

 Ward, Lock & Co. in the Minerva Library of Famous Books in 1889*. 

 A succinct account of the journey Recent Expedition into the In- 

 terior of South- Western Africa was given at meetings of the Royal 

 Geographical Society, Feb. 23 and April 26, 1852, and is published 

 in their Journal, vol. xxn, pp. 140 163. The paper which imme- 

 diately follows this is by Livingstone and Oswell giving an account 

 of their explorations to the north of Lake Ngami. A common map 

 of the Galton and Livingstone explorations (p. 141) is of much interest 



1 I have to thank Dr J. Scott Keltie for most kindly examining the minutes of 

 the Royal Geographical Society for the years 1850-2 for references to Francis Galton. 



2 The Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa, with coloured Maps, 

 Plates and Woodcuts. One of the maps gives a most valuable scheme of the routes 

 of various explorers up to 1851. The cuts are after sketches in Galton's note-books. 



3 This edition has a most interesting Appendix by Galton on the later history 

 of exploration, etc., in Damaraland. It wants, however, most of the cuts of the original 

 and the small map is inferior. 



