REPORT ON CAILLIE'S TRAVELS. 461 
journey and return is proved by the event, and not left to 
conjecture, all men devoted to African researches, who 
may have been diverted from their design by such repeated 
catastrophes following one another, will take fresh courage 
and prosecute the enterprize. This constitutes an addi- 
tional important service, rendered to Science by A. R. 
Caillie, and for which she will hold herself his debtor, 
though his success may not entirely console her for the 
lamented loss of Major Laing. 
On a subject so fertile in geographical and scientific 
developments, it would be easy to expatiate ; but the com- 
mittee feel the propriety of confining themselves within the 
limits of their mission ; their end is attained if they have 
produced conviction. They, therefore, feel it necessary 
equally to pass over in silence the accounts of J. Leon, Ben- 
Batouta, and el-Adrisi; and the intercourse of the 
Portuguese with Timbuctoo in the fifteenth century ; the 
travels of Paul Imbert in the seventeenth ; the still con- 
tested journey of Robert Adams in 1810, and so many 
other travels which, within the last forty years, have suc- 
ceeded each other. To act otherwise would be to forget 
that we address an auditory, who are masters of the prin- 
ciples of every problem in African geography, which, 
gentlemen is sufficiently attested by the subjects of your 
three prizes in favour of men determined upon braving 
every danger to explore this vast continent for the com- 
mon benefit of science and humanity. 
It will be easy, from these premises, to conjecture the 
