134 KEPORT 186-1. 



when we know that Francis Galton, though much occupied ^vith the duties of a 

 General Secretary, will always take part in our discussions, and that Earth * is 

 likely to be present, it is probable that we shall have a concourse of travellers 

 capaiole of illustrating the geography and ethnology of Africa, such as was never 

 assembled at any former meeting. 



If we turn to America, we find that an adventurous gentleman of Chili, Senor 

 Don GuiUermo Cox, has described a new route across the Andes, which, by almost 

 bringing together the waters flowing into the Atlantic and Pacilic, is likely to open 

 out commerce between fertile regions on the west and Buenos Ayres on the Atlantic. 

 Aware of our almost entire ignorance of the interior of Patagonia, the same bold 

 traveller pui-poses to make a journey throughout this enormous unknown region 

 down to the Straits of Magellan. 



In mentioning these straits, I am boimd to remind you how, in former years, that 

 eminent nautical surveyor Admiral FitzRoy, when accompanied by the great na- 

 tm-alist Charles Darwin, threw a flood of light upon the configuration and struc- 

 ture of the coasts of South America and the Falkland Islands. Now, although in 

 this short and popidar Address I cannot do j ustice to all the advances which have 

 been made in meteorology, it gratifies me to direct your attention to the recent 

 important labours in that science of the same gallant oflicer. For, by well-digested 

 comparisons between the state of the barometer and the direction and force of the 

 winds, Admiral FitzEoy has proved to the nation what useful interpreters in his 

 hands are these natural phenomena. By his forecasts of approaching stonns and 

 the prompt use of the electric telegraph, he has saved many a ship and the lives of 

 numbers of our seamen. 



If we range from the south to the north of America, numerous indeed are the 

 tracts which call for examination ; and even at this meeting I hope to see new fea- 

 tures pointed out to us in that northern prolongation of the Kocky JMountains, 

 which separates the sources of the Saskatchewan on the east from those of the 

 Thomson and Fraser rivers of British Columbia on the west. This knowledge, 

 acquired, under great privations, by young Viscount Milton and his friend Dr. 

 Cheadle, comes to us here in addition to what had been gathered together by Pal- 

 liser. Hector, and Blakiston, as published in a Parliamentaiy Blue Book, and has 

 fortimately arrived in time to improve a highly valuable map of British North 

 America, which, derived from original documents, is now about to be issued to the 

 public by that sound practical geographer, John Arrowsmith, who, in virtue of the 

 great services he has rendered to geographical science, most worthily obtained a 

 gold medal of the Eoyal Geographical Society. 



Let me next remind you that we are yet entirely in the dark as to the true geo- 

 graphy of the interior of Arabia. It is ind(;ed only v^ithiu the last few months that, 

 travelling in the guise of a physician, tlie spirited and eloquent Palgrave has been 

 the first intelligent person to traverse that country to the I'orsian Gulf. Can any 

 one who recently heard this traveller nan-ate his adventures before the Geographi- 

 cal Society ever forget the deep impression he made upon the crowded audience 

 when he told us his wondrous x\rabian Nights' tale ? In a word, we must confess 

 that modem geographers are infinitely less acquainted with Arabia than the ancients 

 and their great geographer Ptolemy. 



Again, in Asia — though Russia has very recently, as I have said, done much in 

 the north, and the English in the far south-east of that quarter of the globe— the 

 very last communication to the Royal Geographical Societ)', proceeding from the 

 zealous Hungarian M. Vambery, who travelled disguised as a Dervish, or holy 

 Mohammedan beggar, has brought vi-\'idly to our minds a consciousness of the 

 little we know of the vast countries once ruled over b}^ Genghis Khan and Timur ? 

 In truth, the passage to the ancient capital Samarkand across those regions has of 

 late years become infinitely more difiicult than in the days of jMarco Polo. Then 

 (1390), and even in 1405t, when an embassy from Henry the Third of Spain to 

 the great Emir Timur reached Samarkand, the wide-spread influence of Genghis 

 Khan still subsisted. From that distant day there is no record of any European 



* Dr. Earth was unexpectedly prevented from coming to England. 

 t See ' Narrative of the Embassy of Clavijo,' translated and edited by Clements E. 

 Mai'kham. Volume of {ho Hakluyt Society, 1859. 



