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"Professor Summerlee's rising was the signal for another
extraordinary outbreak of enthusiasm, which broke out again at
intervals throughout his address. That address will not be given
in extenso in these columns, for the reason that a full account
of the whole adventures of the expedition is being published as
a supplement from the pen of our own special correspondent.
Some general indications will therefore suffice. Having described
the genesis of their journey, and paid a handsome tribute to his
friend Professor Challenger, coupled with an apology for the
incredulity with which his assertions, now fully vindicated, had
been received, he gave the actual course of their journey,
carefully withholding such information as would aid the public in
any attempt to locate this remarkable plateau. Having described,
in general terms, their course from the main river up to the time
that they actually reached the base of the cliffs, he enthralled
his hearers by his account of the difficulties encountered by the
expedition in their repeated attempts to mount them, and finally
described how they succeeded in their desperate endeavors,
which cost the lives of their two devoted half-breed servants."
(This amazing reading of the affair was the result of Summerlee's
endeavors to avoid raising any questionable matter at the meeting.)
"Having conducted his audience in fancy to the summit, and
marooned them there by reason of the fall of their bridge, the
Professor proceeded to describe both the horrors and the
attractions of that remarkable land. Of personal adventures he
said little, but laid stress upon the rich harvest reaped by
Science in the observations of the wonderful beast, bird, insect,
and plant life of the plateau. Peculiarly rich in the coleoptera
and in the lepidoptera, forty-six new species of the one and
ninety-four of the other had been secured in the course of a
few weeks. It was, however, in the larger animals, and especially
in the larger animals supposed to have been long extinct, that the
interest of the public was naturally centered. Of these he was
able to give a goodly list, but had little doubt that it would be
largely extended when the place had been more thoroughly investigated.
He and his companions had seen at least a dozen creatures, most of
them at a distance, which corresponded with nothing at present
known to Science. These would in time be duly classified
and examined. He instanced a snake, the cast skin of which,
deep purple in color, was fifty-one feet in length, and
mentioned a white creature, supposed to be mammalian, which gave
forth well-marked phosphorescence in the darkness; also a large
black moth, the bite of which was supposed by the Indians to be
highly poisonous. Setting aside these entirely new forms of
life, the plateau was very rich in known prehistoric forms,
dating back in some cases to early Jurassic times. Among these
he mentioned the gigantic and grotesque stegosaurus, seen once by
Mr. Malone at a drinking-place by the lake, and drawn in the
sketch-book of that adventurous American who had first penetrated
this unknown world. He described also the iguanodon and the
pterodactyl--two of the first of the wonders which they
had encountered. He then thrilled the assembly by some account
of the terrible carnivorous dinosaurs, which had on more than one
occasion pursued members of the party, and which were the most
formidable of all the creatures which they had encountered.
Thence he passed to the huge and ferocious bird, the phororachus,
and to the great elk which still roams upon this upland. It was
not, however, until he sketched the mysteries of the central lake
that the full interest and enthusiasm of the audience were aroused.
One had to pinch oneself to be sure that one was awake as one
heard this sane and practical Professor in cold measured
tones describing the monstrous three-eyed fish-lizards and the
huge water-snakes which inhabit this enchanted sheet of water.
Next he touched upon the Indians, and upon the extraordinary
colony of anthropoid apes, which might be looked upon as an
advance upon the pithecanthropus of Java, and as coming therefore
nearer than any known form to that hypothetical creation, the
missing link. Finally he described, amongst some merriment, the
ingenious but highly dangerous aeronautic invention of Professor
Challenger, and wound up a most memorable address by an account
of the methods by which the committee did at last find their way
back to civilization.
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