TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 155 



siderable value, and may aid future explorers to renew their attempts, -witli better 

 prospect of a complete and successful result. 



The glory of being the first in modern days actually to traverse the almost un- 

 known region between the Indo-Chinese races and China proper, has been re- 

 served for our neighbours the French. The Fellows of the (Geographical Society 

 will recollect the admirable summarj- of the residtsof the great French expedition, 

 which was given by the President in his last Anniversary Address, wherein Sir 

 Roderick Mm-chison described the general course of a journey almost unparalleled 

 in modern days — a journey of 6200 miles from the tidal waters of the Cambogia 

 River to Shanghai, 2-480 miles of the distance having been traversed on foot — the 

 whole distance, with very few exceptions, being almost entirely new to modern 

 European travellers. 



I am not sure whether we are likely to hear from any of our visitors any details 

 of this expedition beyond what has been already published in the French geogra- 

 phical periodicals; but we cannot doubt that whenever the scientific results of 

 such a journey are published, they will prove of surpassing interest. A country 

 so rich and varied in soil, with a rainfiiU probably, in parts, exceeding that of 

 almost any known portion of the globe, and a great variety of temperature, which 

 has been hitherto almost cut off from civilized Europe, while it approximates geo- 

 graphically to some of the most interesting regions of India and the Eastern Archi- 

 pelago, must possess a founa and flora of gi-eat novelty and interest. 



Is or can it be doubted that all these attempts to traverse the regions which sepa- 

 rate India from China have a political and social aspect of the highest importance. 

 It is clear that the time has arrived in China when we may witness one of those 

 great social movements which in all ages liave so powerfully afiected the destinies 

 of nations, and the geographical distribution of races. A vast surplus population, 

 pressed at home by over-competition in the race for life, wells over, as it were, 

 and seeks in other lands the means of supporting existence which have become 

 difficult of attainment in their native country. The pressure from within, in the 

 case of China, has been increased by the existence of artificial barriers, in the 

 shape of legislative obstacles to the free movement of the popidation, and when 

 these are removed or disregarded, the human tide will pour outwards with a force 

 of which emigration from Europe to our own oclonies can give us but a faint idea. 

 The Chinese labourers, who meet but a doubtful welcome, or are repelled from 

 Australia and America, would be hailed as benefactors much nearer their own 

 homes, in almost any of the rich but thinly-inhabited countries between Assam 

 and Saigoon ; and the first Chinese who succeeds in passing overland from China 

 to India and back, may be the herald of an immigration calculated to change the 

 face and the destiny of that vast rich, but almost uninhabited region, which has 

 for so many ages proved an almost impassable barrier between India proper and 

 China. 



Before turning from this part of Asia, I would remind you of a fact new, I 

 beheve, in the annals of geographical discovery, and not often observable in the 

 history of parliamentary interpellations, that two of the best ivsumees of the pre- 

 sent state of our geographical knowledge of Central Asia and the Indo-Chinese 

 frontier, are to be found in the answers given, in his place in parliament, by Mr. 

 Grant Dufi", a Member of the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, to ques- 

 tions addressed during the last session to him, in his capacity as Under Secretary 

 of State for India. 



I may also mention, as a proof of the extent to which purely European ideas are 

 penetrating to those remote regions, that I have seen a translation of a letter, ad- 

 dressed by a friendly Indian potentate to the Grand Llama of Thibet, remon- 

 strating with him on the illtreatment of certain Roman Catholic missionaries and 

 their converts, on the gToimd that the suti'erings of the converts had formed the 

 subject of comments in some of the Indian journals; and the writer of the letter 

 felt assured that evil would result to bis friend the Grand Llama if he suffered 

 public attention in Europe, with the ways and inhabitants of which the writer had 

 intimate personal acquaintance, to be thus attracted to the inhospitable proceedings 

 of the Grand Llama's subordinates. 

 Africa. — It is a great disappointment that another year should have passed with- 



I 



