18351 



Expedition into Central Africa, 



return, that the Committee can reckon it justifiable to exercise upon 

 the lives or persons of the natives those formidable means of warfare 

 with which the e:xpedition has been furnished. It will be proper 

 that each individual attached to the expedition shonid have a deter- 

 minate station, in which it is expected that he shall be found in cases 

 of emergency, and it will be well that the measures necessary to bs 

 adopted should be fully illustrated and im.pressed upon all by such 

 previous training as circumstances may admit of„ 



In regard to the territory the expedition is to visit, there are two 

 methods in which it may arrive at beneficial results : it may either 

 sweep rapidly over a great length of country, with the object of at« 

 Gaining the most distant point which the time allotted to it, or the 

 duration of its resources may enable it to reach ; or it may leisurely 

 examine in detail, throughout its length and breadth, the condition, 

 capabilities, and productions of a district of more manageable dimen- 

 sions. The Committee conceives that the former might be perhaps 

 the more interesting method of proceeding, on account of the greater 

 probability of romantic peril, adventure, or discovery, but that these 

 Very circumstances of greater uncertainty and danger, do, in this 

 case, preclude our aiming at the comparatively barren honour of ex- 

 citing wonder, and of throwing a partial and obscure light on an ex- 

 tended region ^ the Committee therefore assumes that the last-men= 

 tioned of the two courses is, in all respects, more accordant with the 

 views and interests of the Subscribers, as expressed in the Prospec- 

 tus ; the Committee therefore recommends that no endeavour be made 

 to penetrate beyond the parallel of 20"^ south latitude, and that the 

 attempt to reach that parallel be made, only if, in the first place, 

 circumstances favour it greatl}^, and, secondly, if the intervening dis- 

 tricts do not afford objects of sufficient interest and importance to 

 occupy the attention of the expedition. The territory limited by that 

 boundary is about four times the extent of the British Islands. It is 

 in truth to be afiticipated that the wide regions between the Cape Ter- 

 ritory and the Southern Tropic will have siiiScient extent and variety 

 for the time and resources to be employed in our present undertak- 

 ing. It will, therefore, be advisable that the expedition consider 

 Klaar Water (Griqua Town), or Lattakoo, as the starting point or 

 base of their operations, and that its first effort be the examination 

 of the district from which issue the northern branches of the Gariep 

 and the streams which fall down to the Indian Ocean, that then the 

 dividing ridge be traced towards the North, leaving it to the discre- 

 tion of the Director to determine at what parallel he should change 

 his course, to the north or w^est. Our present information leads us 

 to esteem it advisable that the eastern side of the slope be examined 

 first, in order that if the great desert of Challahenga should extend 

 far to the eastward, so as to bar the progress of the expedition to- 

 wards the centre of the Continent, there may remaiii the unexplored 

 territory along the western slope to occupy its attention in return- 

 ing-- Much of the ultimate importance and interest, as well as the 



