alone, and that 411,000 Indian women have received medical assistance in 38 hospitals. Well, this charitable fund, which, I am sorry to say, did not meet in this country with the attention it deserved-for the British branch is sadly lacking in funds—has already been the means of opening a school of medicine for Hindu women, who will consequently devote themselves to the study of anatomy. Anatomy and Asiatic women!—that is the most extraordinary association of ideas one ever could have imagined.

If I were to further dilate on reforms in India, I could go on for hours and hours recounting those surprising measures. They unmistakably prove that our old mother, Asia, is accessible to reforms, and that your nation is in the best way to accomplish that which sceptics still believe unfeasible. But, in venturing to ventilate the question, I think it would be more appropriate, and would better answer our purpose, if we were to consider, in the first place, its two leading features :-First, the time necessary for the realisation of the object; and, second, the means to be applied-simultaneously also, the mistakes committed hitherto in the process of this work of civilisation.

I refer to the question of time necessary for the completion of the task for the simple reason that optimists, as well as pessimists, generally shoot beyond the mark. The fallacy of pessimists has been splendidly proved, and their disbelief in a coming success is crushingly contradicted, by the array of conspicuous evidences, and by the eloquent argument of facts. But the optimists, too, labour under a misconception in supposing that we are on the eve of an entire and radical change in India, and that the millions of Asiatics will turn suddenly, like Deus ex machiná, into thorough Europeans. The fact that nearly one million of natives speak to-day the language of Shakespeare and Milton, and that hundreds of thousands are to-day pursuing the various branches of European science and art this fact alone can hardly be adduced as an argument in favour of an over-sanguine hope in the sudden change of an Asiatic community of 260 millions of men. The transformation in culture of an Asiatic people can only slowly-very slowly-be effected. This we are taught by the example of Turkey, where the upper classes, educated in the ways of modern science, have fairly adapted themselves to the exigencies of culture of the nineteenth century; whilst the mass of the natives still clings, and will long cling, to its ideals of Eastern life. In India the sun of modern culture has risen with a more intense light; but the rays illumine, up to the present, only the heads of society, and are very far from penetrating the masses. The time when Britons will become superfluous in their quality as a civilising agency is yet far distant: and the opinion of those who believe that the people of India will soon be enabled to continue unaided the work of civilisation is hardly worth refutation. I believe, on the contrary, that the great task is only now beginning. Up to the present the way has been only paved and the means prepared; and it is for this reason that the ethnographer, interested in the destinies of the people of Asia, may be pardoned if his attention be not merely absorbed by the results hitherto obtained, but if, for the sake of future progress, he point also to the shortcomings and

mistakes he has hitherto noticed in the process of civilisation. I am obliged to dwell on this unpleasant topic, for the simple reason of my being erroneously called an Anglomaniac, a writer who never finds fault with the doings of your nation in Asia-a supposition against which I have to lodge a protest: for every mania, whether it be Anglomania, Russomania, or Turcomania, is decidedly a defect of judgment due to mental aberration; and, secondly, because criticism is better suited to sincere friendship than unconditional flattery.

Among the various faults which can be ascribed to the inhabitants of this country, in regard to their task and duty in Asia, I would mention, in the first place, the surprising indifference exhibited in Asiatic matters in general, and particularly in the relations of this country with the East. Indifference is the mother of ignorance and of prejudice; hence the curious and saddening fact, that not only the lower but also the middle classes of Great Britain show less interest in, and are less acquainted with, the various countries and nations of the Old World than many Continental peoples who do not own a rood of territory, and who have not got a single farthing invested in Eastern regions. During the last 25 years of my connection with this country, I have had the good fortune to lecture in more than twenty towns, and have had the chance of coming in contact with great merchants, manufacturers, and artists; and I have really been quite struck by the indifference to, and want of information concerning, matters connected with the East. I have frequently put to myself this question: "Are these the citizens of the country that has founded a great empire in Asia and has come forward as the glorious representative of our Western culture?" Verily, my astonishment had no limits, and I could not help saying to myself: "How much greater would have been the merits of Britain, how much more significant would have been the results of her often-proved heroism and rare energy, if the care and interest of those who remained at home had been adequate to the noble task and zeal of their brethren in distant lands?" Yes; this remarkable anomaly must give way, and the sooner the better: for not Russia, but Great Britain, is the greatest European Power in Asia, considering that real influence and power is not based on so many hundreds of thousands of square miles of vacant territory, but on the millions of laborious and peace-loving inhabitants. As a consequence of this deplorable indifference, I have to remark on the complete reserve, coldness, and haughtiness which the British trader, soldier, and civil officer too frequently exhibit in their intercourse with Asiatics-a mistake through which their mutual relations and good understanding are rendered far more difficult than in the case between Russians and their Asiatic subjects. I fully admit that for the Briton of a higher education, and particularly for those who come from the Colleges of Eton and Harrow, and from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, who enter upon the field of Asiatic enterprise, the intimate connection and intercourse with the man reared in Eastern habits and customs will entail greater selfdenial and heavier sacrifices than with the semi-Asiatic Russian, who is separated by a very thin partition-wall from the native of Asia. It would be not only useless but wrong to disregard this national error,

to which must be ascribed the unmistakable decrease of British influence in those parts of Asia where your countrymen have to face the competition of other more pliant and less rigid representatives of the West, and where British manufactures, in spite of their unquestionable superiority, have lost more than one market. The remarks of a distinguished lecturer in this place, last December, regarding British trade with China, refer, I am sorry to say, not only to the whole line of Russian advance, from Eastern Turkistan to Batum, but also to many other points in European and Asiatic Turkey, as well as to Syria and the north of Persia. If you compare former statistical data with those more recent, you will find that the sale of British chintzes, cloth, trinkets, and ironwares has not by any means increased in proportion to their enhanced consumption by the natives; but, on the contrary, it has fallen off.

Well, I believe a nation like yours ought never to suffer such retrogression, and still less ought Great Britain to lose a market, considering that every new market becomes a nucleus of our modern civilisation, and every bale of goods is a valiant apostle of our culture, by which, on the one hand, the sacred cause of Humanity is advanced, and, on the other, the consolidation of this Empire, the interest of which you all have at heart, is promoted. I repeat, therefore, the old indifference must entirely cease. We may notice that, in the absence of some stirring event, entire weeks and months pass without the English daily papers or periodicals consecrating their columns to the discussion of Asiatic topics; and this is not only the case at the present time, when the public is smitten with African fever, but it has always been the same. Africa is a region with a distant and problematical future. The denizen of the Dark Continent has yet to be taught the necessity of dressing, of building a house, and of leading an existence worthy of man; whereas in Asia we are attracted by the conditions of an old culture, and by a society in need, and capable, of reforms—as proved by the examples of India and Japan-and where ample scope is offered for the spirit of enterprise. But in order to accomplish this task we ought not to omit applying the necessary means. Ethnography (I mean a thorough knowledge of the customs and habits, of the history and religion, and of the various peoples under the British Crown or British protection) is a far more potent charm for the acquisition of confidence and sympathy than the thundertramp of mighty armies. Still less indispensable is a knowledge of native languages. You will pardon me when, encouraged by many years' experience, and by some acquaintance with the schools of this country, I venture to say that the study of ethnography and of the languages of Asia is sadly neglected by you, and that Germany, Russia, and AustriaHungary bestow greater care on the cultivation of these branches of knowledge than does Great Britain. Towards the end of the last, and in the first decades of the present, century, when this country was laying the foundations of her actual power and influence in Asia, British scholars had taken the lead in the study of Eastern languages and archæology. To-day we could hardly make such an assertion, although the influence of Britain has since grown ten-fold stronger, and scientific interest ought to have increased in due proportion. It has often been a reproach to the Government, that they do nothing to further the study of Oriental

languages, whereas other governments, less interested in Asia, have spent annually considerable sums towards this end, and employ only those officers who are thoroughly versed in the languages of the respective countries. Well, I would not, and I could not, whitewash the Government of this country, for they are guilty of great neglect. But, on the other hand, I venture to presume that the inhabitants of these islands, unlike Continental peoples, are in the habit of helping themselves, on their own initiative, and that they do not like to implore the assistance of the State in everything. If so many, or perhaps most, of the charitable institutions and colleges have been founded by private individuals, and are kept up by Society, why should not this be the case with schools for Oriental languages? There are the Missionary Societies and Chambers of Commerce, which might serve as intermediaries for the advancement of Oriental teaching-I mean to say, for practical instruction in Eastern idioms. It need hardly be added that a missionary well acquainted with the language will more readily find his way to the heart of the Asiatic, and that the merchant, if informed of the tastes and wants of foreign peoples, will enjoy a larger sale and a wider field for his wares.

This shortcoming has often been imputed to the supposed defective linguistic ability of Britons in general, of whom it is said, that they are not so prone and gifted to acquire the colloquial part of foreign tongues as many other foreign nationalities. Well, this is one of the greatest mistakes. Linguists of my personal acquaintance, such as the late Lord Strangford (for Turkish), the late Sir Richard Burton and the late Professor Palmer (for Arabic); or scholars like Sir James Redhouse, Sir Henry Rawlinson, Sir William White, and many others, bear evidence of the brilliant linguistic capacity of the British; and, in fact, nothing would be easier than to recruit in this island a goodly number of Oriental linguists for employment in various Asiatic countries.

In a word, it is time that the coldness and indifference with which events in Asia are viewed by a large majority of Britons should cease: for every patriotic man ought to be imbued with the conviction that the political greatness and welfare of the United Kingdom depends mainly, if not exclusively, on its position in Asia. There are people among whom the opinion prevails that Great Britain, having no colonies, but only possessions, in the East, is merely a guest in Asia, and that, owing to this temporary character of her rôle, she cannot engage in farreaching enterprises. Such, however, is the opinion only of the envious and of the enemies of this country, with whom the wish is father to the thought, and who do not possess sufficiently deep insight into the social relations between the East and the West. My own unpretentious opinion is quite to the contrary. A long theoretical and practical study of the question has fully convinced me that it would be vain for the Asiatic to attempt to withdraw from the transmuting influence of the materially and morally superior West; that our intervention has become an imperious necessity, from a strictly humanitarian point of view; and that, finally, this tutorship were in the first instance best undertaken by Great Britain, as being the country best qualified to leave a salutary impression on the minds of Asiatics,-which has been proved by the examples of India and Japan.

THE LAKE REGION OF CENTRAL AFRICA: A CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY OF AFRICAN CARTOGRAPHY.

By E. G. RAVENSTEIN.

(Read at a Meeting of the Society, Glasgow, 21st November 1890.)
(With Maps.)1

A SHORT time ago I received a letter from a friend in Liverpool, who had seen an old globe in a Swedish museum, which, to his utter astonishment, depicted Central Africa as a region abounding in lakes. As this globe dated back to the seventeenth century, my friend, not being a professed geographer, quite naturally accepted the presence of these lakes as proof of actual discovery, and concluded that our modern explorers could therefore be credited at most with having re-discovered lakes, known long since, but erased from modern maps by a younger generation of cartographers infected with the sceptical spirit of their age and generation.

When your Society honoured me with an invitation to lecture before you, I thought that this subject might prove more especially attractive to a Glasgow audience, for your city is not only closely connected with Livingstone, who has done great things towards an elucidation of the hydrographical features of Central Africa; it is also the headquarters of an African Lakes Company, which promises so much towards throwing open the Dark Continent to commerce and civilisation.

I am quite aware that my subject is not a new one. Fully two centuries ago the learned Ludolphus, in his work on Ethiopia (1681), pointed out the errors of his predecessors, who, not content with retaining Ptolemy's two Nile lakes, had assigned to the great lake of Abyssinia a position which gave quite a distorted view of what was really known in their day. The contemporaries of Ludolphus took little heed of his criticisms, and it was only with Delisle and D'Anville that these gross blunders of an uncritical age disappeared from our maps.

BEFORE PTOLEMY.-Before proceeding to a consideration of Ptolemy's map, it may be worth while to indicate broadly the materials which were available when that great cartographer compiled his monumental work. In early times the communication between Egypt and Meroe, the great metropolis of Ethiopia, were frequent. Quite a host of travellers are known to have visited the city which was then the centre of a powerful empire. Philo furnished Eratosthenes with the latitude of Meroe; Dalion is reported to have travelled far beyond that city; Simonides, the younger, stayed five years there, and wrote a work on Ethiopia; Bion lived some time there; whilst two centurions, sent out by the Emperor Nero in quest of the sources of the Nile, are reported to have reached

1 The maps accompanying this paper are reduced from some of the diagrams exhibited at the meeting.