INAUGURAL ADDEESS O 



It will be impossible for me to do more than just glance at 

 some few of the subjects upon which additional knowledge is 

 urgently required, and may be reasonably hoped for. Let us 

 begin with Geography. Now, I need say nothing to this meet- 

 ing about the almost total ignorance in which we live of some 

 of the more distant and inaccessible portions of the gTeat extent 

 of land about which this Society proposes to collect and publish 

 information. I need not remind you how completely New 

 Guinea is a " terra incognita ;" or even of how little is known 

 of the interior of Borneo and Sumatra. Let us look nearer 

 home. It would probably astonish some people to learn how ex- 

 tremely little accurate knowledge we possess even of the Malay 

 Peninsula itself. Fortunately we have before us what will 

 give us a very clear understanding of the limits of our acquaint- 

 ance with this region, which lies at our very doors. The un- 

 completed map which is displayed on this wall, is one that is 

 now being carefully prepared under the able direction of Mr. 

 Skinner. I hope when these remarks of mine are concluded, 

 that Mr. Skinner will himself correct me if, in the few words I 

 have to say upon his important work, I unintentionally convey a 

 wrong impression ; and that he will give us any additional in- 

 formation respecting it, which he may think it desirable to com- 

 municate now. And I may mention that he has promised the 

 Council of the Society a paper upon the subject, in which he will 

 no doubt state very much more clearly than I could do, what is 

 the present condition of our knowledge of the Geography of the 

 Peninsula. 



But I will ask you now to look at that map : observe the im- 

 mense spaces which are entirely blank, or have merely the name 

 of the- native Government to which they are supposed to be at- 

 tached written across them, such as Kelantan, Patani, Tring- 

 ganu ; and compare them with the few districts, almost entirely 

 on the Western Coast, in which the mountains are sketched in, 

 the course of the rivers traced, and the names of towns and vil- 

 lages inserted. Does it not remind some of us of what the map 

 of Africa used to look like in our school days, before the dis- 

 coveries of Livingstone and his successors ? Yet it is not of a 

 vast continent like Africa, upwards of 2,000 miles in breadth, 

 that we are speaking, but of a narrow peninsula which, at its 

 greatest breadth, only extends to about 200 miles, from the Straits 

 of Malacca to the China Sea. This Peninsula has been known 

 to Europeans for just 370 years, and that map shews you all, or 

 almost all, that Europeans have learned about its geography in 

 that time. But the map is also a sign that a great effort is being 

 made to bring this state of ignorance to an end. It is, as you see, 



