This brusque rejection of his plan for new mission stations north of the Zambesi and his wider object of opening the interior via the Zambezi, was not enough to make him resign at once. When he was approached by Roderick Murchison, president of the Royal Geographical Society, who put him in touch with the Foreign Secretary, Livingstone said nothing to the LMS directors, even when his leadership of a government expedition to the Zambezi seemed increasingly likely to be funded by the Exchequer. "I am not yet fairly on with the Government," he told a friend, "but am nearly quite off with the Society (LMS)." And while he negotiated with the government, he deceived the LMS into thinking that he would return to Africa with their mission to the Kololo in Barotseland, which Livingstone had used his national fame to coerce them into initiating against their better judgement.