EXPLORERS FOREGATHER.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7865, 29 July 1911, Page 11

EXPLORERS FOREGATHER.

The greatest gathering of distinguished explorers that has ever met under one roof assembled at the Hotel Cecil, London, last month, as guests of the Royal Geographical Society\as the society’s annual banquet. Ko fewer than twentytwo recipients of the society's ;go!d medal were present. Amongst them were Sir John Forrest, tho doyen of British explorers, .who searched the wilds of Australia .in the ■’sixties; Sir Martin Conway, who has climbed the highest peaks in the Himalayas; Sir Clements Markham, who trod tho Arctic in the 'fifties; Mr F. C. Selous, tho mighty hunter of wild game; Dr M. A. Stein, the Indian archaeologist; Sir Francis Younghusband, who dared tho terrors of Thibet; Sir Ernest" Shacideton, of "Farthest South" fame; and those valiant foreigners,' Dr Sven Hedin. and Dr J. B. Charcot. “There were Ulysses scattered about the tables,’' as the. chairman, Ford Curzon, happily remarked. And they represented, he said, "a knowledge of world service greater than has ever been concentrated ’within tho walls of a single room." Ono immortal Explorer, though absent, was not forgotten. Rear-Admiral Peary, the first to reach tho Pole, sent an expression of regret that h© could not be present,. and said that "the honours and medals of the Royal Geographical Society, as all nations know, are not a mere formality, but aro an unassailable mark und stamp of a great achievement."