738 BEPOKT— 1888. 



fifty yards of it are ever straight. Aud tlie reason is not far to seek. If a stone 

 is encountered no native will ever think of removing it. Why should he ? It is 

 easier to walk round it. The next man who comes that way will do the same. . . . 

 Whatever the cause, it is certain that for persistent straightforwardness in the 

 general, and utter vacillation and irresolution in the particular, the African roads 

 are unique in engineering.' No country in the world is better supplied with paths; 

 every village is connected with some other village, every tribe with the next tribe, 

 and it is possible for a traveller to cross Afi-ica without once being off a beaten 

 track. The existence nearly everywhere of a wide coast plain with a deadly 

 climate, and the difficulties attending land transport in a country where the usual 

 beasts of burden, such as the camel, the ox, the horse, and the mule, cannot be 

 utilised, will probably for many jeai's retard the development of the land trade. 

 On the other hand, the Congo with its wide-reaching arms, the Niger, the Nile, 

 the Zambesi, the Shire, and the great lakes Nyassa, Tanganyika, and the Victoria 

 and Albert Nyanzas offer gi'eat facility for water transport, and afford easy access 

 to the interior without traversing the pestilential plains. Already steamers ply 

 on most of the great waterways — each year sees some improvement in this respect ; 

 and a road is in course of construction from Lake Nyassa to Tanganyika which 

 will tend, if Arab raiders can be checked, to divert inland traffic from Zanzibar to 

 Qiulimane, and will become an important link in what must be one of the great 

 trade routes in the future. It is possible, I believe, with our present knowledge 

 of Africa, and by a careful study of its geographical features, to foresee the lines 

 along which trade routes will develop themselves and the points at which centres 

 of trade will arise ; but I have already detained you too long, and will only venture 

 to indicate Sawakin, Mombasa, Quilimane, or some point near the mouth of the 

 Zambesi, and Delagoa Bay, as places on the east coast of Africa wliich, from their 

 geographical position, must eventually become of great importance as outlets for 

 the trade of the interior. 



The future of Africa presents many difficult problems, some of which will no 

 doubt be brought to your notice during the discussion which, I trust, will follow 

 the reading of the AJrican papers ; and there is one especially — the best means 

 of putting an end to slave-hunting and the slave-trade — which is now happily 

 attracting considerable attention. It is surely not too much to hope that the 

 nations which have been so eager to annex African soil will remember the trite 

 saying that ' property has its duties as well as its rights,' and that one of the most 

 pressingly important of the duties imposed upon them by their action is to control 

 the fiends in human form who, of set purpose, have laid waste some of the fairest 

 regions of the earth, and imposed a reign of terror throughout Equatorial Africa. 



The following Papers and Report were read : — 



1. Le Canal de Panama.^ Par F. de Lesseps. 



2. Meteorological Conditions of the Red Sea. 

 By Lient.-General Strachet, F.B.S. 



3. Sea Temperatnres in the neighbourhood of Cape Guardafui.^ 

 By Lieut.-General Stkachet, F.B.S. 



4. The Salinity of the Cli/de Sea Area.^ 

 By Hugh Robert Mill, 'D.Sc, F.B.S.E. 



The observations made by the staff of the Scottish Marine Station on the Clyde 

 sea area during the years 1886 and 1887 show that the salinity of the bottom 



' Published in the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, Oct. 1888. 



= JW(i. Nov. 1888. 



= Published in extenso in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 



