March. 1894. OBITUARY. 229 



suffered great hardships, and numbers died from malaria and other 

 diseases. After reaching Gondokoro, the Bakers pushed on south, 

 and towards the end of 1871 estabhshed a fortified camp on the Nile 

 at Fatiko, from which he waged war unceasingly on the slave hunters, 

 and for a time checked the trade. But so soon as he left the country 

 the trade revived and the crusade was continued by Baker's suc- 

 cessors. Baker and his wife returned to England in 1873, ^^^ ^^^^ 

 the story of their expedition in " Ismaili'a " 1874. 



Sir Samuel settled down for a while at Newton Abbot, but the 

 old sportsman and traveller could not rest. He and his wife visited 

 Cyprus in 1879, Syria, India, Japan, and America in later years. 



His chief works, beside those referred to above, are : — " With 

 Rifle and Hound in Ceylon," 1854; "Eight Years' Wanderings in 

 Ceylon," 1855; "Cyprus as I saw it in 1879 " ; " Wild Beasts and 

 their ways," 1890. 



The cost of African exploration has been exceptionally heavy 

 during the past month. Mr. Ingham has been killed by an elephant 

 owing to the jambing of his rifle on the Congo, where he had done 

 much good work. M. Parmentier, who for several years had been one of 

 the Belgian officials on the Upper Congo, and who added greatly to 

 our knowledge of its geography, has died at Nice ; on the very day of 

 his death the news arrived that three missionaries in Equatorial Africa 

 had fallen victims to the climate. The unhealthiness of this region 

 has been impressed on the public mind by the difficulties it is placing 

 in the settlement of Uganda. By Sir Gerald Portal's death, the 

 malarial dysentery of the Sana has robbed the nation of a public 

 servant of exceptional promise ; Mr. Rennell Rodd, who took his place 

 at Zanzibar, has been invalided home and cannot return to Africa. 

 Captain Besant who had started to fill the vacancy left by the death 

 of Sir Gerald Portal's elder brother in Uganda, has collapsed on the 

 way, and has been brought back to the coast by Dr. Charters of the 

 mission station at Kibwezi. The news, however, that the daring 

 young American explorer, Mr. Astor Chanler, has succeeded in reaching 

 Mombasa is the one bright spot on the page of disaster. He started 

 in September, 1892, on an expedition to Fort Kenia and Lake Rudolph. 

 His colleague. Lieutenant von Hohnel, was wounded by a rhinoceros 

 in the thigh and had to be sent back. Shortly afterwards eighty porters 

 who had been sent up as reinforcements with extra stores left him and 

 returned to the coast, and this was followed by a still heavier blow as 

 over one hundred of his original force deserted and left him in Daicho 

 with only eighteen men. 



ALEXANDER THEODOR VON MIDDENDORFF. 

 Born 1815. Died 28 January, 1894. 



MIDDENDORFF was born at St. Petersburg ; he studied medicine 

 at Dorpat, where he received his doctor's degree in 1837. He 

 completed his studies in Germany, and in 1839 was appointed 



