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OCR Rendition - approximate
The Reawakening : Scientific Exploration 215 fellows, and at the suggestion of the latter, Galton consulted the officials of the Society as to his journey. He was elected a member in the spring of 1850 and thus begun his relationship to the Royal Geographical which lasted so many years. According to the minutes of the Society Galton submitted, on March 25, 1850, a scheme for his journey to the South African lake and the route he proposed to take. This paper was not published in the Society's Journal and it has not been possible to obtain access to the papers of that period in the Society's archives'. The matter is probably of small importance, for had Galton gone up from the Cape to Lake Ngami, he would have found Livingstone already at work exploring the district he had thought of, and it was probably therefore providential that on his arrival at the Cape he found himself cut off from Ngami by the great trek of the emigrant Boers, who had "wrested the whole breadth of the habitable country north of the Orange River" and cut off all communication northward. After some doubts as to proceeding to Lake Ngami from the Portuguese settlements on the east coast, Galton determined on starting from Walfisch Bay on the west and crossing Damaraland. This roughly enabled him to fill in the unknown district between Alexander's west and east line, Livingstone's Lake Ngami work and the Portuguese possessions on the west coast, that is to say the upper half of the present German South-west African colonies. The account of Galton's journey was published by Murray in 18532, and a new edition by Ward, Lock & Co. in the Minerva Library of Famous Books in 18893. A succinct account of the journey-Recent Expedition into the Interior of South-Western Africa-was given at meetings of the Royal Geographical Society, Feb. 23 and April 26, 1852, and is published in their Journal, vol. xxii, pp. 140-163. The paper which immediately follows this is by Livingstone and Oswell giving an account of their explorations to the north of Lake Ngami. A common map of the Galton and Livingstone explorations (p. 141) is of much interest 1 I have to thank Dr J. Scott Keltie for most kindly examining the minutes of the Royal Geographical Society for the years 1850-2 for references to Francis Galton. 2 The Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa, with coloured Maps, Plates and Woodcuts. One of the maps gives a most valuable scheme of the routes of various explorers up to 1851. The cuts are after sketches in Galton's note-books. 3 This edition has a most interesting Appendix by Galton on the later history of exploration, etc., in Damaraland. It wants, however, most of the cuts of the original and the small map is inferior.
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