Considerably as my department has already contributed to the formation of the fund appropriated to this object, I have proposed to the King to grant to M. Caillié, from the colonial funds, a special indemnity of three thousand francs, the allowance of which I have directly announced to M. Caillié.
A favour of still higher value has since been decreed to this traveller; by an ordinance of the 10th of December, issued upon my report, the King has named him a Knight of the royal order of the Legion of Honour.
I congratulate myself in having to acquaint the Geographical Society with these acts of royal beneficence, which I have joyfully seized the opportunity of recommending in recompense for M. Caillié’s devotedness.
Be pleased to accept, &c.
Signed Baron Hyde de Neuville.
Extract from the Minutes of the General Meeting of the 5th of December, 1828.
M. Jomard, the organ of the Committee charged to draw up an account of the results of M. Caillié’s travels, read the report, which was listened to with the most lively and intense attention. After having successively explained all the reasons upon which the conviction of the Committee was founded, and especially the agreement which subsists between the accounts of this traveller and those published by such of his predecessors as are the most accurate and most deserving of credit; after having announced that M. Caillié’s journal contains an itinerary continued without interruption from Rio-Nuñez to Tangier; the reporter delivered a sketch of the results of the Travels sufficient to excite, but not to satisfy the curiosity of the audience. He enumerated the principal places which our countryman visited during a journey of seventeen months, and of about three thousand miles. We shall only cite his embarkation at Jenné on the Dhioliba (vulgarly called the Niger), his navigation from thence to Timbuctoo, during an entire month in the season of shallow water; his residence in this town, and his subsequent journey across the great desert, during two months and a half, to the kingdom of Morocco and to Tangier. There M. Delaporte, Consul of France and a member of the Geographical Society, received our countryman, lavished upon him all the attentions which his ill-health and exhaustion demanded, after his escape from the dangers of the climate and the perils of so long and arduous a journey.
The report was warmly applauded; and, in conformity to the conclusions of the Committee, M. Caillié was introduced, and received from the hands of the President the recompense offered to his generous self-devotion, that is to say, the produce of a subscription opened by the Society in behalf of the person who should first succeed in penetrating to Timbuctoo by the way of Senegambia, and in furnishing a description of that town.