'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From December 1854 to March 1856. (New Issue.) Edited by the Secretary. Volume XII.' [‎2] (21/258)

11
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY.
twelvemonth. Out of twenty-four meeting days,betwixt July 1852 and July 1854,
there appear to have been ten when there were no meetings at all; one at which
the Society seemed to have proceeded with business when the chairman and secre
tary were the only parties present, an irregularity that appears to have been passed
over. On six occasions there were no more than three members present, on six
others there were five, once there were six, and on the occasion of the greatest
multitude, the chairman might have exclaimed with Wordsworth’s little child,
‘ We are seven.’ Our native members, to their credit be it spoken, though forming
a very small proportion of those on the list, seem always to have formed the majority
at the Meetings. I have not included the Secretary in my enumeration, he being
merely the servant of the Society, present only on compulsion. During these two
years there seemed to have been no more than five papers laid on the Table—
there is nothing to show that any of them were ever read. And the circumstance
is fresh in my recollection of paper after paper, such as those which meet with the
utmost acceptation at home, being attempted to be read, when the reader was
either interrupted by some one remarking that his observations would be studied
time enough in the Transactions, or being left, like the Dean of Saint Patrick's
addressing his dearly beloved Roger, speaking to the President nearly the only
auditor left, he most likely remaining like Sterne’s startling, because he could not
get out.
It was not difficult to trace the cause of this unhappy state of things, the aban
donment or the completion of Surveys, and the unhappy state of war which be
twixt 1836 and 1842 raged along our North-West Frontier Region of British India bordering Afghanistan. had hermetically seal
ed against us regions little known, of unbounded interest, and which just before
had been the favorite resort of travellers, so that, the supplies of papers purely
Geographical naturally dried up. On this, the Society resolved to fall back upon
investigations in the wider field of Physical Geography, such as their founders
had originally prescribed for themselves. In 1845, these became fully developed,
and met the cordial approval of all parties, and received a promise from Govern
ment of all the assistance that could be given. But out of this almost imme
diately followed the most unlooked for dissensions amongst the members, resulting
in a long train of wranglings and misunderstandings, painfully recorded in the
Keports, fret 1 in the recollection of most of the members, and which eventuated,
as it was clearly seen, they must necessarily eventuate, in the unhappy state of
matters which now obtains. To recall these more minutely than I have done, is
to some extent superfluous, and might re-awaken animosities or re-open questions,
we are all disposed to suffer to sleep. From the obstructions so unaccountably
thrown by members of the Society themselves in the noble path of enquiry on
which we had commenced, we have been compelled to abandon that path altoge
ther, while those who most actively shared in these inauspicious proceedings are
no longer amongst us. We have now therefore before us a fair field with every
thing that is favorable for its cultivation, and without dwelling too minutely on
the past, our object ought to be to see how lost time can be redeemed for the future.
Geography in its widest sense includes so large a sweep of things that are popular
and involves so little that is necessarily dry, that it would seem most singular, if