of Yaouri, where he had gone ashore from the Niger river. "During my stroll round the town," says Mr. Duncan, "I was followed by dense crowds of people wherever I went. Upon my return to my quarters, I was visited by the king, who expressed a wish to see me fire out of my gun. To gratify his curiosity, I shot a pigeon which was flying past. This excited great surprise."

The next record of African travels and explorations, which we will consider, is that of Dr. Barth.* In company with Mr. James Richardson and Mr. Overweg, neither of whom lived to reach home, Dr. Barth crossed the Sahara desert, in 1849, from Tripoli in the north. The desert, he tells us, is not entirely a level expanse; but it consists of broad table-lands of sand, interspersed with groups of rocky eminences and mountain chains, some of which rise to the hight of six thousand feet. Sometimes his march was over a dreary plain; at other times his track was in a hollow or a valley, with steep slopes. Having entered the interior, his route, in some parts, was girded by mountains from three to four thousand feet high. The first signs of extensive fertility which greeted him were in Sudan. The air, here, is salubrious. The huts of the people are, in many places, made of the tall, strong stalks of Indian corn. This corn is thrashed with long poles. Proceeding south-westward he came to more pleasant agricultural and domestic scenes. 'He reached," as he says, "those fertile regions of central Africa, which are not only able to maintain their own population, but even to export to foreign countries." Where he traveled he was cheered by the warblings of numberless tribes of birds. He proceeded to the west of Lake Tsad, finding it a vast body of shallow water, having no perceptible outlet. His most important geographical discovery is, that the Niger does not, as had been supposed, rise in Lake Tsad, but rather in highlands nearly as far south as the mouth of that river. He deemed the moment one of the happiest of his life, in which he made his discovery. "I cherished," says he, "the wellfounded conviction, that along that natural high road European influence and commerce would penetrate into the very heart of the continent."

A distinct view of the general character of the interior, where our author made the most important part of his journey, can not perhaps be more adequately formed than by tracing, for some distance, his occasional descriptive observations. On the twenty-fifth of November, 1852, Dr.

Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, in the years 1849-1855, in three volumes. By Henry Barth, Ph. D., D. C. L.

Barth is taking leave of the town of Kükawa, for the purpose of exploring the countries situated on the middle course of the Isa or Niger. November twenty-sixth is the coldest night he experiences in Negroland. The thermometer indicates only nine degrees above the freezing point. The interior of Africa, so far removed from the influence of the sea, forms, he tells us. "with respect to the cold season, an insulated cool space in the tropical regions." Our traveler has here a sharp appetite.

November 30th. "The district, in a northwesterly direction, seems to be rich in pasture grounds and cattle." But the ground is full of ants of voracious habits. He approaches the Komadugu river, one hundred and twenty yards broad, having excellent fish and being adorned i with luxuriant trees. The district is fertile. The swampy forests abound with elephants, antelopes, wild hogs, water fowl, Guinea-fowl, partridges, and monkeys. "Beautiful and rich as was the scenery of this locality, it has the disadvantage of harboring immense swarms of musketoes. He reaches the town of Grémari, having from seven to eight thousand inhabitants.

December 8th. He emerges into open, cultivated ground, and is greeted with the sight of a pretty sheet of open water, breaking forth from the forest on the left. The water abounds with fish.

December 14th. He passes the town of Sulliri, having five thousand inhabitants. Granitic eminences dot the whole country. Proceeding to the north-west he reaches a natron or salt lake of snowy whiteness. "I gazed," says he, "with delight on the rich scenery around.”

December 20th. "As we marched, during the hottest hours of the day, I felt," says he, “very unweli, and was obliged to sit down for a while.”

December 21st. Cattle and camels enliven the scene. The country is dotted with numerous ¦ corn-stacks. He reaches Badamuni, which is surrounded by hills rising from one hundred to two hundred feet. Here are copions springs, sorghum, millet, cotton, pepper, indigo, and onions. He finds here also two lakes, one salt, the other fresh, united by a narrow channel. The natron lake is a dark blue; the other dark green. We can not follow him further in his weekly march. On June 20, 1853, he reaches the Niger on the side opposite the town of Say. The river here is seven hundred yards broad. Thence our traveler proceeds north-westward, on the way to the great city of Timbuctu. He enters this city on the seventh of September. It is about three miles in circumference, is laid out partly in rectangular and partly in winding streets, is not walled, has about nine hundred and eighty clay

1

houses and two hundred conical huts of matting, three large mosques, a settled population of about thirteen thousand, and a floating population of from five to ten thousand. Our traveler staid for some time in this city, and owing to the turbulence of the times his life was frequently in great jeopardy. But he at length escaped, recrossed the desert, and arrived at Tripoli on the twenty-sixth of July, 1854.

Judging from Dr. Barth's record, one would suppose that he passed over thousands of acres as pleasant and arable as most of the land lying west of Lake Michigan. At least he must have traversed extensive tracts of soil, far more healthful than Louisiana land or Georgia land can ever be.

The third record of travels and explorations in central Africa to which we invite the reader's attention, is that of Mr. Bayard Taylor.* This has been perused with delight by nearly all intelligent Americans. The volume is pervaded with a sort of melodious richness, which makes it strongly fascinating. It is almost a book of poetic prose. The reader is made completely to sympathize with the traveler in all his experiences. Description, in this case, has the charm of romance itself. Speaking of the work the Westminster Review, for October, 1858, says, "Mr. Bayard Taylor's 'Life and Landscapes from Egypt,' is perhaps the most wonderful piece of continuous description, the most marvelous reproduction of the sensations of travel, that can be conceived."

Mr. Taylor entered the interior of Africa from the north-east. He sailed up the Nile, the beautiful Sihor of Hebrew history. In his work he calls this river the "Paradise of Travel." He ascended to the point where the White Nile and the Blue Nile mingle their waters to form the same famed stream, along whose banks the builders of the pyramids, and of Thebes and Memphis, once wandered. Still keeping his face to the south he traced the White Nile toward its sources, all the way sailing or treading amid transcendently-beautiful scenery. He entered at length the country of the Hassaniyehs, the last of the African tribes under the Egyptian government. He represents this people as having peculiar views of "woman's rights." Parents, in giving their daughters in marriage, claim for them perfect freedom from their husbands on every fourth day. So during three days in every twelve, and five in every twenty, the wife is completely released from her masculine companion,

A Journey to Central Africa; or, Life and Landscapes from Egypt to the Negro Kingdoms of the White Nile. Tenth Edition. By Bayard Taylor.

and is at liberty to pass the time with any one she may love better. "Their hospitality," says Mr. Taylor, "is such, moreover, that if a stranger visits one of their settlements they furnish him, for three days, with a tent and a wife." One should think that the free-love party would all wish to be expatriated, as they deserve to be, to the villages of these clever negroes.

Mr. Taylor describes the vegetation of this region, in that rich, melodious style, which is usually so peculiar to him. Possibly he has superadded to the real charms of the White Nile and the lands adjacent too many ideal and poetic adornments. But be this as it may, his narrative clearly shows that the farther he traced that bright river toward its sources the more enchanting and glorious grew the scenery which it mirGoing south of Khartoum, where, in the hot season, he says o' e "must either sweat or die," he entered the country of the Shilloohs. These he pronounces the only real modern lotus eaters.

rors.

They eat the root and the seed of the lotus. The root is like the potato in consistence and taste, having a strong flavor of celery. Our traveler reaches at last a limit beyond which his dragoman and boatmen are unwilling to go. But he prizes his opportunity too highly not to make the most of it, even in the face of jeopardy itself. He, therefore, leaves the river and ventures to enter one of the Shillooh villages of that interior region. It was an undertaking which required considerable heroism. He could not tell whether or not his very flesh would soon be passing down the throats of negro cannibals. The result was, that he found a people whose faces had a wolfish expression. They could skip like gazelles, "clearing the ground with a remarkable elasticity and swiftness of foot."

Mr. Taylor's stay was not long among these strange negroes. He soon began the return journey. When his company had put the boat in motion northward, he himself went ashore to wander awhile under the luxuriant foliage. He came by and by to a large tract of high, dry grass, and seeing the paths of lions leading through it he proceeded no further; but giving way to a roguish Yankee impulse-such as you and I can easily conceive-he took a match from his pocket, lighted it, and kindled a blaze in those dry jungles, the crackle and smoke of which furnished excitement to him for many miles.

Mr. Taylor saw no indications of the so-called Mountains of the Moon, which are laid down in old maps, though he penetrated sufficiently far to ascertain that the makers of these maps labored under a great mistake. "Geographical charts," says he, "are still issued, in which the conjec

tured Mountains of the Moon continue to stretch their ridges across the middle of Africa, in latitudes where the latest travelers find a plain as level as the sea." From certain observations of his, made amid the Nilotic ruins, Mr. Taylor infers that our race, unless it be supposed to have had several centers of origin, is more likely fifty thousand than five thousand years old. But in an article like the one now under our pen, this hasty and erroneous deduction can not be discussed.

Leaving Bayard Taylor's book, we come next to the recorded travels and explorations of Dr. Krapf and his associate, Rebbman, who entered the interior of Africa from the eastern coast, between the years 1844 and 1848.* These missionaries explored the interior for several hundred miles. They discovered mountains covered with perpetual snow. They traversed the beautiful Galla country; also the Faita country, which is represented as inclosed by mountains from four thousand to five thousand feet in hight. Mr. Rebbman afterward explored the highlands beyond Faita, and while wandering over the fertile and richly-clothed soil, he affirms that "he felt as if walking in the Jura Mountains, in the canton of Basle, so cool was the air, so beautiful the scenery."

Speaking of the bearings of the discoveries made by himself and his associate, Dr. Krapf expresses the opinion that the high roads of interior Africa will, in future time, "take every observer by surprise." "It will then," says he, "be manifested that the facilities of communication on the African continent are not inferior to those of Europe, Asia, and America."

But it is time that I had introduced the record of the greatest of all the recent explorers of central Africa; namely, that of Dr. David Livingstone. All educated people of this day, it is presumed, are somewhat familiar with the name which has just been mentioned. Being a person of excellent abilities and vast scientific information, Dr. Livingstone has made his volume one of permanent attractions. His very face, which is represented in his personal narrative, shows him to be as earnest an Englishman as ever prayed for the health of Queen Victoria. He has that look of mingled sincerity and nervous courage which the worst people can not but like and admire-a look which would extort expressions of good-will from pirates or from savages. His early history is highly interesting. When

Cyclopedia of Missions, Eastern Africa. By Rev. Harvey Newcomb.

† Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. By David Livingstone, LL. D., D. C. L.

but ten years old he was a factory "piercer." With part of his first week's earnings he purchased a copy of Rudiman's "Rudiments of Latin." He read the classics at an evening school. At sixteen he knew Virgil and Horace better than he did in his manhood. He early became a Christian convert, and resolved to devote himself as a pioneer missionary. Having thoroughly prepared his mind, especially in medicine and theology, he embarked for Africa in 1840. In 1843 he was occupied in the Mabotsa Valley, in south Africa. While there he was attacked, in a hunting excursion, by a lion, "which shook him," he says, "as a terrier does a rat." The shock caused a sort of dreaminess, like that experienced by patients under the influence of chloroform. The lion's jaws "crunched the bone of his arm to splinters," and left eleven teeth wounds in the flesh.

For a long time Dr. Livingstone labored among the Bakwain people. But he formed the purpose of exploring the interior to the north and the north-west. His first journey resulted in the discovery of the great Lake Ngami-pronounced N'gami. Along the Zonga river, which is connected with the lake, he found trees of the boobad species measuring from seventy to seventysix feet around, and some hollow ones in which twenty or thirty men could lie down and sleep. He passed the Bakoba people, a tribe who never fight, and who call themselves by a word meaning "men." Our author pronounces them "the Quakers of the body-politic in Africa."

The lake was reached on August 1, 1849. It is from seventy to one hundred miles in circumference, and is comparatively shallow. Its waters, when full, are perfectly fresh; but when low are somewhat brackish. Our author returns to Kolobeny, and in the following spring goes again to the lake region for the purpose of visiting the chief of the Makololo, in the country beyond. But some of the members of his family are seized with sickness near the lake, and he returns to the south. By and by he sets out once more to the north and north-west. He reaches this time the Chobe river, and is welcomed by the Makololo tribes. Their chief had come down the river one hundred miles to meet the white men, of whose coming he had been forewarned. Dr. Livingstone and Mr. Oswell travel to Gesheke, one hundred and thirty miles north-east, and in June, 1851, they discover the Zambesi river, in the center of the continent. Its breadth there is from three hundred to six hundred yards. Our traveler returns to Cape Town. But in June of the year 1852 he makes another tour to the northwest; and this is his last and longest African journey. He crosses over to the capital of An