186 
TEAVELS IN CENTEAL AFEICA. 
It is also stated that I was detained for want of camels at 
Korosko, and was too late in the season in leaving Khartoum ; but 
Speke was a great deal later in leaving Zanzibar. I am blamed 
for being at Gondokoro seven months beyond the time so unjustly 
quoted by the Committee as the limit to which my attempt to 
succour Speke was confined, while he was sixteen months after the 
period appointed for his reaching that place. 
Does not this show the folly of any man, or body of men, sitting 
down in London and fixing the time for the meeting of two expedi- 
tions — the one starting from Egyj)t and the other from Zanzibar, 
both to meet at Gondokoro at a given period — the latter having 
one thousand five hundred geographical miles and the former two 
thousand miles to travel ? 
And now with thanks to those readers who may have patiently 
followed me through so much dry and, perhaps, uninteresting 
matter, I submit to their consideration the justice of the Council 
of the Koyal Geographical Society, who accorded unlimited praise 
to the one who had the shortest distance to perform, and was the 
longest about it, while they would neither recognize the efforts of 
the other to keep his appointment, nor welcome him home ! 
