you a confirmation of our authority, with the power of increasing our
numbers by co-option from among you as our judgment may suggest. And we ask
for this authorisation--which can be at any time withdrawn by your
resolution in a full meeting--for the period of two years. At the
expiration of this period we shall--we are fully convinced--not only have
fixed upon a new home, but have lived in it long enough to have learnt a
great deal about it.'

This proposition was unanimously adopted.

The President announced that all the communications of the executive
committee to the members would be published both in the newspapers and by
means of circulars. He then closed the meeting, which broke up in the
highest spirits.

The first act of the executive committee was to appoint two persons with
full powers to organise and take command of the pioneer expedition to
Central Africa. These two leaders of the expedition were so to divide their
duties that one of them was to organise and command the expedition until a
suitable territory was selected and occupied, and the other was to take in
hand the organisation of the colony. The one was to be, as it were, the
conductor, and the other the statesman of the expeditionary corps. For the
former duty the committee chose the well-known African traveller Thomas
Johnston, who had repeatedly traversed the region between Kilimanjaro and
Kenia, the so-called Masailand. Johnston was a junior member of the
Society, and was co-opted upon the committee upon his nomination as leader
of the pioneer expedition. To take charge of the expedition after its
arrival at the locality chosen, the committee nominated a young engineer,
Henry Ney, who, as the most intimate friend of the founder and intellectual
leader of the Society--Dr. Strahl--was held to be the most fitting person