14 PBESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 



year. Meantime roads or rather lines of communication are being 

 established. The Church Missionary Society has already made 

 good its station at Uganda, on the further shore of the Yictoria 

 Nyanza, while the Livingstonian Mission is doing the same on 

 the Tanganyika, and the half-way house at Mpapwa, established 

 by the Church Missionary Society, bids fair to become a great 

 central station for the interior commercial routes of Eastern 

 Africa. Our great Missionary Societies are thus demonstrating 

 to the world the sisterhood of Christianity, commerce, and civi- 

 lization, and are striving not unsuccessfully to outstrip the two 

 imported curses of Africa, the Arab slave hunter and the rum 

 trader. 



Turning from the Tropics towards the Pole the great geographi- 

 cal event of the year has been the accomplishment, after efforts 

 fitfully continued for four hundred years, of the north east pass- 

 age from the White Sea through Behring's Straits, by the noble 

 Swedish professor, Nordenskjold. The early Dutch navigators 

 towards the end of the fifteenth century, with appliances which 

 seem contemptible to the modern navigator, nearly accomplished 

 the feat, but the discovery of America, of the Cape Eoute, and 

 of the New "Worlds of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, seem to have 

 caused IS'orthern Asia to be forgotten for two hundred years. 

 How far the exploit may open out new routes for trade is still a 

 problem, but even if the whole course, especially towards Beh- 

 ring's Straits, be rather geographically interesting than commer- 

 cially profitable, the mouths of three of the greatest rivers in the 

 world, the Obi, the Lena, and Yenesei, are proved to be accessi- 

 ble during the summer months, and the rivers themselves to be 

 so far navigable, as to open out to the markets of the world a 

 boundless corn-growing and forest region, which may yet enable 

 Siberia to take her place, not a mere dreary prison house of des- 

 potism, but as one of the food-exporting nations of the world.* 



The other principal additions to our geographical and natural 

 history knowledge during the past year have been the explora- 

 tions of several Italian travellers, and especially of Sig. d' Albertis 

 in ITew Guinea, where also our Australian fellow-countrymen 



* See Vol. v., p. 260. 



