iS49-5 2 -] KOLOBENG—LAKE 'NGAMI. 103 



journey he had performed successfully had hitherto baffled 

 the best-furnished travellers. In 1834, an expedition 

 under Dr. Andrew Smith, the largest and best-appointed 

 that ever left Cape Town, had gone as far as 23° south 

 latitude ; but that proved to be the utmost distance they 

 could reach, and they were compelled to return. Captain 

 Sir James E. Alexander, the only scientific traveller 

 subsequently sent out from England by the Geographical 

 Society, in despair of the lake, and of discovery by the oft- 

 tried eastern route, explored the neighbourhood of the 

 western coast instead. 1 The President frankly ascribed 

 Livingstone's success to the influence he had acquired as a 

 missionary among the natives, and Livingstone thoroughly 

 believed this. " The lake," he wrote to his friend Watt, 

 " belongs to missionary enterprise." " Only last year," 

 he subsequently wrote to the Geographical Society, " a 

 party of engineers, in about thirty wagons, made many 

 and persevering efforts to cross the desert at different 

 points, but though inured to the climate, and stimulated 

 by the prospect of gain from the ivory they expected to 

 procure, they were compelled, for want of water, to give 

 up the undertaking." The year after Livingstone's first 

 visit, Mr. Francis Galton tried, but failed, to reach the 

 lake, though he was so successful in other directions as to 

 obtain the Society's gold medal in 1852. 



Livingstone was evidently gratified at the honour 

 paid him, and the reception of the twenty-five guineas 

 from the Queen. But the gift had also a comical side. 

 It carried him back to the days of his Radical youth, when 

 he and his friends used to criticise pretty sharply the 

 destination of the nation's money. "The Hoyal Geogra- 

 phical Society," he writes to his parents (4th December 

 1850), "have awarded twenty-five guineas for the discovery 

 of the lake. It is from the Queen. You must be very 

 loyal, all of you. Next time she comes your way, shout 



1 Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xx. p. xxviii. 



