ADDBES8. 21 



Lave surveyed the courses of the Jaxartes, the Oxus, and the Amur, and 

 have navigated the Caspian and the Sea of Aral. They have pushed their 

 scientific investigations into the Pamir and Eastern Turkestan, until at 

 last the British and Russian surveys have been connected.* 



Again, fifty years ago the vast central regions of Africa were almost 

 a blank upon our best maps. The rudely drawn lakes and rivers in maps 

 of a more ancient date had become discredited. They did not agree 

 among themselves, the evidence upon which they were laid down could 

 not be found, they were in many respects highly improbable, and they 

 seemed inconsistent with what had then been ascertained concerning the 

 Niger and the Blue and White Nilos. At the date of which I speak, 

 the Sahara had been crossed by English travellers from the shores of 

 the Mediterranean ; but the southern desert still formed a bar to travellers 

 from the Cape, while the accounts of traders and others who alone had 

 entered the country from the eastern and western coasts were considered 

 to form an insufficient basis for a map. 



Since that time the successful crossing of the Kalahari desert 

 to Lake Ngami has been the prelude to an era of African discovery. 

 Livingstone explored the basin of the Zambesi, and discovered vast 

 lakes and waters which have proved to be those of the higher 

 Congo. Burton and Speke opened the way from the West Coast, which 

 Speke and Grant pursued into and down the Nile, and Stanley down 

 the course of the middle and lower Congo ; and the vast extension of 

 Egyptian dominion has brought a huge slice of equatorial Africa within 

 the limits of semi- civilisation. The western side of Africa has been 

 attacked at many points. Alexander and Galton were among the first to 

 make known to us its western tropical regions immediately to the north 

 of the Cape Colony ; the Ogowe has been explored ; the Congo promises 

 to become a centre of trade, and the navigable portions of the Niger, the 

 Gambia, and the Senegal are familiarly known. 



The progress of discovery in Australia has been as remarkable as 

 that in Africa. The interior of this great continent was absolutely 

 unknown to us fifty years ago, but is now crossed through its 

 centre by the electric telegraph, and no inconsiderable portion of it is 

 turned into sheep-farms. It is an interesting fact that General Sabine, 

 so long one of our most active officers, and who is still with us, 

 though, unfortunately, his health has for some time prevented hinx 

 from attending our meetings, was born on the very day that the 

 first settler landed in Australia. 



In hydrography onr charts have been immensely improved. The study 

 of rivers and of the physical geography of the sea may indeed almost 

 be said to have come into existence as a science during the last fifty 

 years, and in the words of Jansen, it was Maury 'who, by his wind and 

 current charts, his trade-wind, storm, and rain charts, and last, but not 

 least, by his work on the physical geography of the sea, gave the first 

 great impnlse to all subsequent researches,' 



