“16. It will be very advisable to take with you your Assistant-Surgeon, if he can be spared, as medical advice, and a little medicine go further with the Moors than any other knowledge—besides he may also have leisure to pay some attention to the natural history of the country; or at least to collect a few plants and some geological specimens: if you can also take with you a draughtsman it will be very desirable.
“17. In conclusion, all geographical information will be valuable; note it immediately in a journal as fully as possible; and be so good as to preserve your original notes and observations, and mark hear-say information with the name of the informant. I need hardly add it is absolutely necessary that you should have a good interpreter, who will probably be procured at Mogadór (or according to your instructions from the Admiralty); and you must be provided with a few trifling presents as beforementioned, gunpowder, snuff, tea, gaudily printed cotton handkerchiefs, which are valued in the order I have placed them.
“Begging you to excuse the freedom with which I have offered these suggestions, and heartily wishing you success,
“I have the honour to be, &c.
| “To Lieut. Holland, H.M.S. Scorpion.” | “John Washington.” |
| “Sir: | “Royal Geographical Society of
London, 26th October 1836. |
“I have the pleasure to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, dated Wad Nún the 22d May; and am much more gratified to hear that you have arrived thus far without any serious accident, and sincerely hope it may be an earnest of future success. As an opportunity offers of sending you a letter direct, and as it may possibly still find you at Wad Nún, I write to say that any details relating to the topography of your immediate neighbourhood will be very acceptable to the Geographical Society, as we know nothing of it, and but little of the country you have lately traversed, between Mogadór and Wad Nún.
“To save you trouble I have drawn up a few questions, requesting you, when you do not reply to them from personal knowledge, to state on what authority you give the answer, and whether you think it may be relied on or not.
“1. Does a river called Wad Dar’ah pass through the town of Wad Nún, and does it flow to the sea?