This degree or measure of success seemed to put the great lake further off than ever. Europeans despaired of their ever finding or beholding it, and none but traders and huntsmen subsequently traversed that part merely of the road towards it, which the expedition did pass over; while the only scientific mission which has acted since in South Africa, viz., that of Captain Sir J. E. Alexander, sent out by the Royal Geographical Society of London,--hopeless, apparently, of doing anything by following Dr Smith's route, travelled and explored along the western coast.
It was remarked long since by the North American Indians and other aborigines, that the "black-robe chiefs of the mission" had always preceded the daring hunter and the crafty trader; and in no country has the _preceding_ spirit of the missionaries been more evident than in South Africa. While pushing their stations continually further and further into the interior, they christianize and civilize the tribes as they go, and so leave the way paved and open behind them; a most important condition, when it is remembered what excessive distances a traveller is there from his resources, and in what an impracticable country.
Silently, but surely, has this operation been going on, until as it were, almost by natural causes, a point has been reached, within which the lake was but at a moderate distance. Starting from Mr Moffat's advanced post of Kuruman, Mr Livingston had founded the station of Kolobeng further north; and then it only required a small advance of money to pay the expense of the long contemplated journey. That sum was furnished by two lay gentlemen, Messrs Murray and Oswell,--and this great cynosure of South African geography, fell, in the ripeness of time, an easy prize.
But if we have this much to say for the effective lever which the missionary system affords for geographical discovery, we cannot say so much as we should like in favour of the manner in which it has been worked in this instance, though it may be better than in the generality of cases.
There has been of late, it must be confessed, rather a decline of the true scientific spirit of geographical exploration; and men have too frequently been contented with filling their books with accounts merely of what they shot and what they eat; unable to give any more intelligent account of the country than the natives themselves.
