Johnston, ALEXANDER KEITH, LL.D., F.R.S.E.

Johnston, ALEXANDER KEITH, LL.D., F.R.S.E., cartographer and geographical publisher, was born near Edinburgh, December 28, 1804. His first important work, the National Atlas (fol.), occupied him for five years, and was published in 1843. Its merits received immediate recognition, and Johnston was appointed Geographer Royal for Scotland. Acting on a suggestion from Humboldt, he visited Germany, and gathered material for his Physical Atlas (1848; 2d ed. 1856). Its publication was the signal for a shower of honours from the geographical societies of Europe. In 1850 appeared a very useful Dictionary of Geography, better known as 'Johnston's Gazetteer.' In 1851 he constructed the first physical globe, showing the geology, hydrography, &c. of the earth. His Royal Atlas of Geography (1861) was one of the most beautiful and minutely accurate atlases ever executed up till that time. Johnston also published atlases of Astronomy and Geology; a Military Atlas for Alison's History of Europe; besides educational atlases, physical, general, and classical, which obtained a wide circulation. He died 10th July 1871.—His son, ALEXANDER KEITH, born in 1844, was educated in Edinburgh, trained as a draughtsman in his father's firm, and afterwards extended his experience in London and Germany. He took part in an exploring expedition to Paraguay in 1874, and in 1879 was appointed leader of the Royal Geographical Society's expedition to East Africa, mainly for the purpose of discovering a practical route to the interior. He was scarcely a month on the way when he fell a victim to dysentery at Berbera on the road between Dar-es-Salaam and Lake Nyassa, 28th June 1879. His work was taken up and successfully completed by Mr Joseph Thomson. Johnston, who was a frequent contributor to the Geographical Magazine, produced a Physical Geography (1877), edited and extended Hellwald's Africa (1879) in Stanford's series, and edited a sheet map of Africa and Boyce's Gazetteer (1879).