ted him a sum of twenty-five
guineas "for his successful journey, in company with Messrs. Oswell and
Murray, across the South African desert, for the discovery of an
interesting country, a fine river, and an extensive inland lake." In
addressing Dr. Tidman and Alderman Challis, who represented the London
Missionary Society, the President (the late Captain, afterward
Rear-Admiral, W. Smyth, R.N., who distinguished himself in early life by
his journey across the Andes to Lima, and thence to the Atlantic)
adverted to the value of the discoveries in themselves, and in the
influence they would have on the regions beyond. He spoke also of the
help which Livingstone had derived as an explorer from his influence as
a missionary. The journey he had performed successfully had hitherto
baffled the best-furnished travelers. In 1834, an expedition under Dr.
Andrew Smith, the largest and best-appointed that ever left Cape Town,
had gone as far as 23 deg. south latitude; but that proved to be the utmost
distance they could reach, and they were compelled to return. Captain
Sir James E. Alexander, the only scientific traveler subsequently sent
out from England by the Geographical Society, in despair of the lake,
and of discovery by the oft-tried eastern route, explored the
neighborhood of the western coast instead[30]. The President frankly
ascribed Livingstone's success to the influence he had acquired as a
missionary among the natives, and Livingstone thoroughly believed this.
"The lake," he wrote to his friend Watt, "belongs to missionary
enterprise." "Only last year," he subsequently wrote to the Geographical
Society, "a party of engineers, in about thirty wagons, made many and
persevering efforts to cross the desert at different points, but though
inured to the climate, and stimulated by the prospect of gain from the
ivory they expected to procure, they were compelled, for want of water,
to give up the undertaking." The year after Livingstone's first visit,
Mr. Francis Galton tried, but failed, to reach the lake, though he was
so successful in other directions as to obtain the Society's gold
medal in 1852.

[Footnote 30: Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xx. p.
xxviii.]

Livingstone was evidently gratified at the honor paid him, and the
reception of the twenty-five guineas from the Queen. But the gift had
also a comical side. It carried him back to the days of his Radical
youth, when he and his friends used to criti