288 Sir John Lubbock’s Address. 
being quite unexplored, while the eastern sides of Green- 
land and Spitzbergen, and the coasts of Nova Zembla were 
almost unknown. Now the whole coast of Arctic America has 
been delineated, the remarkable archipelago to the north has 
been explored, and no less than seven northwest passages 
none of them, however, of any practical value — have been 
traced. The northeastern passage, on the other hand, so far 
at least as the mouths of the great Siberian rivers, may per- 
haps hereafter prove of commercial importance. In the Ant- 
arctic regious, Enderby and Graham Lands were discovered in 
1831-2, Balleny Islands and Sabrina Land in 1839, while the 
fact of the existence of the great southern continent was estab- 
lished in 1841 by Sir James Ross, who penetrated in 1842 to 
78° 11’, the southernmost point ever reached. 
In Asia, to quote from Mr. Markham, “our officers have 
mapped the whole of Persia and Afghanistan, surveyed Mesopo- 
tamia, and explored the Pamir steppe. Japan, Borneo, Siam, 
the Malay peninsula, and the greater part of China have been 
brought more completely to our knowledge. Eastern Turke- 
stan has been visited, and trained native explorers have pene- 
trated to the remotest fountains of the Oxus, and the wild 
plateaus of Tibet. Over the northern half of the Asiatic Con- 
) 
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 Niles. Atthe date of which 
I speak, the Sahara had been crossed by English travelers from 
the shore of the Mediterranean: but the southern desert still 
formed a bar to travelers 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 insuf- 
ficient basis for a map. 
Since that time the successful crossing of the Kalahari des- 
ert to Lake Ngami has been the prelude to an era of African 
discovery. Livingston explored the basin of the Zambesi, and 
