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3n 2)arke6t Hfrica. 



BY this time our readers have become familiar with Mr. Stan- 

 ley's narrative of his travels and sufferings in connection 

 with the Emin Pasha Expedition. The dreary half-year spent in 

 cutting his way through the forest, the wearisome return to 

 Banalya in search of Barttelot's rear column, the three journies to 

 the Albert Nyanza Lake, the vacillations of Emin, the march to 

 Zanzibar, every one has read about^ and we have no intention of 

 going again over this well-trodden ground. But there are many 

 facts bearing on the natural history of Equatorial Africa, which 

 are scattered about in Mr. Stanley's fascinating volumes, and 

 which we think our readers will thank us for bringing out from 

 the mass of incident and adventure by which they are, to some 

 extent, obscured. 



Has any light been thrown on the subject of man's origin ? 

 This is a question most of us have put to ourselves while reading 

 the intrepid explorer's latest work. It has been said more than 

 once that Stanley has discovered '^ the missing link." During his 

 travels up the Congo, in 1874 — 7, it was reported that he had met 

 with men who possessed tails, and it is still believed by some, not 

 of course amongst the well-informed, that this really was the case. 

 It turned out, however, that Stanley's references to this matter 

 were nothing more than a report of certain myths related to him 

 by Rumanika, an African romancist. Later on, in Uregga, he 

 encountered a tribe whose chief food consisted of what the 

 natives called " Sokos," /.<?., chimpanzees. As the skulls of their 

 victims looked remarkably human, Stanley brought a couple of 

 them home, and they were examined by Prof. Huxley. He 

 declared that " nothing in these skulls justifies the supposition 

 that their original possessors differed in any sensible degree from 

 the ordinary African negro." The tribe in fact consisted of 

 cannibals, but they were ashamed to confess it. 



During his latest journey he came across a race of Pigmies, 

 and these have been thought by some to constitute a sort of 

 missing link between man and the lower animals. But there is 



