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Transition Studies   25


party had become exhausted in furnishing meals and caches to the entire expedition, this section would separate from its companions and return home. A second 'section' would subsequently act as the first had done, and afterward a third and even a fourth, according to their original number. Finally the explorers would be left by themselves at some days' journey in advance of the farthest known watering place, with their own loads of provisions untouched, and with other provisions stored in caches, fully sufficient for their return, and in every respect as capable of further exploration as if it was from their own caqap, and' not from a spot in the heart of the desert, whence they were about to take their departure.

Doubtless the same general idea must often have occurred to other travellers besides myself; but whether it is because the details have been found puzzling and difficult to work out, or because the necessary vessels for carrying water were not to be met with when wanted, no traveller in arid countries has ever availed himself of the great power which this method of exploration affords'."

Galton starts with a table of the weight of water and food, needed as rations by horse or mule, ox, and man per day, and also the total weights which each can drag or take on its back. The problem is then to determine at what distances each section of the party is to return so as to leave the ultimate exploring party with full weights of rations and full caches for the return journey. It was exactly the sort of problem which delighted Galton; there was a little of mathematics2, a little of statistics and considerable amount of ingenuity required, and the whole had a practical bearing. He adopted the binary system by which half the remaining party returned at the end of each stage. It would not be fitting here to discuss at greater length Galton's tables and results. He had chiefly in view the then unexplored regions of Australia.

As Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society Galton came into touch with many famous travellers-Burton, Speke, Grant, Stanley, etc. Galton himself drafted the instructions for the Burton-Speke expedition of 1856, which led to the discovery of Tanganyika and the Victoria Nyanza lakes, a discovery made at the painful cost of a quarrel between Burton and Speke. Galton had an all-round admiration for Speke and Grant, and a respect for the eccentric genius of Burton. Of Stanley he thought less favourably as of a man inclined to sacrifice the scientific aspect of geography for what the younger generation would term journalistic `stunts.' The letters of both Burton and Speke to Galton give evidence of the difficult position of the latter in his relation to the two former as Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society'.

1 Loa cit. p. 61.

2 There is a misprint in Eqn. (3) of p. 65 where in the value for s, the section that. turns back first, the numerators of the two fractions should of course be a'-i and a'-2 respectively.

8 Galton was first among those who worked for the Speke Obelisk in Kensington Gardens, and he desired above all things that a joint memorial to Speke, Burton, Grant, Baker, Stanley and Livingstone should be arranged near the Speke Obelisk as a reminder to later generations of what our nation has done for African discovery.-We might well add Galton himself to the list.-The time has, perhaps, come now when the smaller, if very human, side of these men might be forgotten under a common monument. Galton wrote a letter to the Times, May 25, 1904, advocating such an African memorial to include the names of earlier travellers-Bruce, Mungo Park, Lander, Clapperton and Barth (who was subsidised by England). He suggested a massive block of stone with a map of Africa in bold coloured mosaic on its curved top, even as Africa would appear on a five foot globe. The memorial was to be surrounded by such African trees, shrubs and flowers as will grow in this country. But although Burton and Speke were both dead, the wound was not yet healed and nothing came of Galton's plan.

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