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The Reawakening : Scientific Exploration 239


them, an old man, riding a long ten days' journey right across an abominable country, just to wish me goodbye before I left. Andersson I have left behind as trader, and set him up with my remaining provisions &c., on, condition that he makes a good try, straightaway to reach the Lake, in this he will have I believe but little difficulty, as we have already so fully explored the more difficult parts of the roads there. The Missionaries go in a posse with 20 guns in another direction due north to the great river, at my request, and now I am trying to find out where this river most nearly joins the sea, and if I can arrange affairs so as to get a cruiser to take me there, which I do not think improbable, I will make a fortnight excursion to it and then return home. I have an excellent interpreter in my man Timboo and now knowing all the tribes adjacent to the river, I shall have I think very little difficulty in getting the necessary information at St Helena. To the Governor there I have a Government letter so I daresay that lie will stretch a point to help me in my scheme. I have traced a water communication from a great lake if not the lake to the westward and so if I can only find out its mouth, a great step will be gained towards opening a road to the interior. But you will be tired of hearing about these things, which though they are my hobby, cannot be expected to be yours.-So Douglas and Herman have both gone and got married ; if it was not so late,•I would have written to them to have offered my best congratulations.

The missionaries here have a very funny way of getting married; when one wants a wife, he writes to the President of the Society who turns the ' matter over in his mind and picks out a likely young lady to suit him and packs her off. The most extraordinary thing is, that the young ladies are quite willing to go, whether they have ever seen their future spouse or not. I wife came out by this vessel for one of them. A middy on board the " Grecian " told me that he had lately met a German missionary at Sierra Leone who had had no less than thirteen wives. The climate killing the poor creatures as fast as' they cane out. This Bluebeard was just married to his fourteenth. I shall be very glad of a fortnight's rest at St Helena. Potatoes and bread I have been worrying at ever since I have been on board. They taste so nice after living for such a very long time on tough meat and hides, and a house with a roof to it and glass windows will be a real luxury, right glad too I shall be to get on the back of a horse, after plodding more than a hundred days' journeyings on that of an execrable ox. My saddle tree and stirrups I shall keep and use them in England. I shall of course write to you again from St Helena and so now, Goodbye and with my best love to every individual of the family, Believe me, Ever your affectionate son, F. GALTON.


Galton reached England on April 5, 1852, two years after his departure on the same day of the same month by the " Dalhousie." A sketch' map of his route from Walfisch Bay to the interior had reached the Royal Geographical Society two months earlier. The paper describing his journey was read on Feb. 23 and on April 26, 1852, i.e. partly before and partly after his return.., The preface to his Tropical South Africa is dated April 27, 1853-a year later. During that year he was awarded a gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society, followed in =1854 by the silver medal of the French Geographical


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