162 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



engineers who pooh-poohed its possibility at th< 

 meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, where ii 

 was the subject of a paper by Lesseps, have prove< 

 untrustworthy guides and prophets. I threw myself 

 into the thick of the discussions and criticisms of 

 whatever had just been done, and into the prepara- 

 tions for what was about to be undertaken, and was 

 in short a very active member of the Council. 



It was not long after my marriage that the 

 character of a piece of work that lay before me was 

 clearly perceived. It w r as ready to be taken in hand 

 and most suitable to my powers. It was to aid others 

 in the exploration of the then unknown parts of the 

 world, especially of Africa, of whose total length as 

 much had been seen by me in my two journeys as 

 perhaps by any one else then living. Being placed on 

 the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, I 

 thoroughly utilised that position to fulfil my object. 

 The ignorance of travellers in any one country of the 

 arts of travel employed in others was great, and I 

 tried to make a compendium of them all. Having 

 easy access to every traveller of note in England, I 

 read many books of travel, or rather skimmed them 

 for the purpose. Amongst others, I turned over every 

 page in Pinkerton's well-known series of large quarto 

 volumes of the narratives of travellers. 



The result was that sufficient material was 

 gathered for the composition of a small book entitled 

 the Art of Travel (Murray). It soon reached a 

 second edition, and was afterwards rewritten and 

 much enlarged to form a third edition, which was 

 stereotyped, and even now continues to be sold. I 

 also took considerable part in the first edition of the 



