60 GALTON OK THE EXPLORATION OF ARID COUNTRIES. [Dec. 14, 1857, 
lie added, did the highest honour to the individual who accomplished such 
laborious and hazardous journeys, and had made us familiar, through his 
artistic skill, with vast mountainous regions of the earth which had been 
trodden by few civilised men. He strongly commended this work to the 
favourable consideration of the Fellows. 
Announcements. — The Chairman announced that, respecting the 
reported discovery of a large fresh- water lake in South Australia by 
Mr. Goyder, an account of which had been read at a previous meet- 
ing, Captain Freeling, the Surveyor-General, had just returned from 
the exploration of the so-called grassy, well-water ed district, which 
he found to be almost entirely imaginary, and that the flood waters 
had disappeared. Lake Torrens was again a shoal salt lake, with 
immense borders of mud. After the most persevering efforts it was 
found impossible to launch the boat taken up by Captain Freeling. 
The country near the lake was also found to be of the most desolate 
character, exactly as our geographers Eyre, Sturt, and Frome had 
described it. 
The papers read were 
1. The Exploration of Arid Countries . By Francis Galton, Esq., m.a., 
Honorary Secretary. 
There is no comparison between the difficulty of first exploring a 
desert land and that of travelling across it when its oases have been 
discovered. Besides the difficulties of a new road and the necessity 
of travelling during the heat of daylight, all first explorers labour 
under a peculiar and overwhelming difficulty in having the fear of 
a double journey" perpetually before their eyes. They can never 
venture so far from camp as to preclude the possibility of being 
able to return to it without a fresh supply of water, and the ex- 
treme limit of their excursions, into the heart of the desert, is 
reduced to one-half of that which they (or other travellers after 
them) could have accomplished, if they had been assured of a 
watering place at the close of their journey. Again, as the radius 
of their excursions is only one-half of the length available, it follows 
that the area of their explorations may be only one -fourth as much, 
and, therefore, that their chance of finding an oasis, useful to others, 
is in that proportion less than what it would be if they became pos- 
sessed of means of travelling farther. And, finally, even this 
limited field of exploration can only be attempted by persons who 
are able to endure great personal hardship, and who do not shrink 
from the certainty of exhausting their cattle, and the great risk of 
killing some of them, in each fruitless expedition. Exceptional 
cases doubtless occur ; indeed, if it were not for these, the longer 
