GEOGRAPHY AND EAST AFRICA 207 



I should have an ungrateful task if I had to speak 

 at length of Stanley's travels down the Congo. 

 His journey was first described at Brighton at a large 

 meeting of the Geographical Section of the British 

 Association, of which I was the President. The 

 ex-Emperor and Empress of the French were among 

 the audience. So much mystery had been preserved 

 beforehand about it that none of us had a conception 

 of what was coming, which is quite contrary to usual 

 procedure. Mr. Stanley had other interests than 

 geography. He was essentially a journalist aiming 

 at producing sensational articles, and it was feared 

 from the newspaper letters he had already written that 

 he might utilise the opportunity in ways inappropriate 

 to the British Association. However, the meeting 

 went off without more misadventure than a single 

 interference on my part, but under some tension. I 

 will not enter further into this. 



It is highly necessary to the credit of a Society 

 that its Council should, as a rule, and always when 

 there is any misgiving, exact that the papers about 

 to be read should be referred to experts and favour- 

 ably reported on. The Society gives a pulpit, as it 

 were, to the speaker, and in its turn has a right to 

 exact precautions that these advantages should not 

 be abused. I cannot understand to this day how 

 that strange individual, Rougemont, obtained per- 

 mission to read his fantastic, perhaps half-hallucinatory 

 paper about the coral reefs and treasures in Australia 

 before the British Association. Putting every other 

 improbability for the moment to one side, the " Art- 

 of-Travel ' impossibilities in his story, as in the 

 construction of his raft, would have made me 



