408 THROUGH THE HEART OF AFRICA 



2. Lecture tickets to be sold for the benefit of the Society, members 

 to have such privileges of purchase as may be determined upon by 

 the Board ; the object of the lectures to be to diffuse geographic 

 knowledge and to raise revenue for the Society to enable it to estab- 

 lish a permanent invested fund for the promotion of geographic 

 research. 



3. Create within the Society a special body of members to be 

 known as Fellows, to be selected from the general membership of the 

 Society for-jtheir special knowledge of matters relating to geographic 

 science, and let the Fellows hold scientific meetings of their own to 

 promote the advancement of geographic knowledge, the income of 

 the research fund to be applied as directed b}^ them. 



Respectfully submitted. 



Alexander Graham Bell, 

 President of the National Geographic tSociety. 



THROUGH THE HEART OF AFRICA 



In the siiniiner of 189S two young Englishmen, Messrs E. S. Grogan and 

 A. H. Sharp, left Capetown, bent on reaching Cairo by journeying through 

 the heart of Africa. They said nothing of their project, for as no man had up 

 to that time accomplished the feat there were doubts of their success, and, as 

 Mr Grogan says, "failure is unpardonable." The journey as f^r as Zambezi 

 was through territory comparatively well known and uneventful. Here their 

 real forward movement began by steamer up the Shire River for 200 miles, then 

 by road 100 more, where a second boat took them 500 miles to the northern 

 end of J^ake Nyassa. Then followed a second march on foot, this time of 200 

 miles, to the south end of Lake Tanganyika, and then by boat again 350 miles 

 to the north end of the lake. The work of exploration began at this point. 

 From here they advanced slowly and with toilsome marches. Mr E. S. Grogan, 

 in The Geographical Journal for August, gives an interesting account of their 

 experiences. 



In the neighborhood of Lake Kivu he found evidences of a considerable de- 

 gree of civilization. The hills were terraced for cultivation, the villages and 

 cultivated lands inclosed by hedges, and artificial reservoirs provided with side 

 troughs for watering cattle. The people here, who "are a purely pastoral folk, 

 breeding a long-horned cattle," were divided into two classes— the Watusi, the 

 aristocrats, jvobably descendants of the great wave of invasion of Gallas that 

 penetiated in remote ages as far as Lake Tanganyika, who do no work beyond 

 milking and butter-making, and the Wahutu, the aborigines of the country, 

 who are to all purposes mere slaves of the Watusi. "All the cattle belongs to 

 the king absolutely, but was held in trust by his satraps, who again parceled 

 it out among the minor Watusi." 



