346 Miscellaneous. 



M. Du Chaillu and his Book. 



The following letter, from Mr. R. B. Walker, of the Gaboon, ap- 

 peared in the ' Morning x\dvertiser' of Sept. 16. It was written for 

 and sent to 'The Times,' but not inserted : — 



" Gaboon, West Africa, July 22, 1861. 

 " M. Du Chaillu, in his letter which appeared in ' TheTimes' of May 

 22, in reply to what he somewhat contemptuously terms the ' cavils ' 

 of Dr. Gray, having ventured to refer that gentleman to his (M. 

 Du Chaillu' s) friends in Corisco and Gaboon, and to the missionaries 

 and traders in general, it appears to me that to remain silent after 

 such a challenge would be an unpardonable act of complicity on their 

 part. Therefore, as a trader in this river and the neighbourhood of 

 ten years' standing, I take up the gauntlet he has so recklessly thrown 

 down. I trust to your impartiality to give insertion to this letter, in 

 which I will point out a few only of the most glaring and gross of his 

 numerous false statements and exaggerations which have struck me 

 on a careful perusal of his so-called 'Explorations in Equatorial 

 Africa,' — which work is neither more nor less than an amusing fiction, 

 — in which the author, knowing the improbability of finding speedy 

 contradiction in England, has given full scope to his apparently very 

 fertile imagination. Were this work to be allowed to pass undisputed, 

 not only might the confiding public in geneial, but the scientific world 

 in particular, suffer by too readily accepting as bond fide the ' tra- 

 veller's tales ' with which it is replete. 



" Having known M. Du Chaillu for some years personally, and 

 possessing, moreover, from reliable sources, information the most 

 exact as to his antecedents, besides having a knowledge of many of 

 the places and people which he pretends to describe, I am induced to 

 request a place in your journal for the following remarks. 



" M. Du Chaillu has stated that he found piles of human bones in 

 the F'an (properly F'an, pi. Ba F'an) towns which he visited. I do 

 not pretend to have been in the particular towns or villages which he 

 mentions, and which probably have no other existence than in his 

 own imagination ; but I have twice visited the Ba F'an country, 

 living in one of their towns for four clays at a time, besides making 

 shorter stays in some eight or ten others, one of which, situated about 

 120 miles from the mouth of this river, contains about 3000 inha- 

 bitants, and I never saw the slightest vestige of human remains in 

 any of them ; nor did either of the two Europeans, or the nume- 

 rous natives of Gaboon and Kroomen, by whom I was accompanied, 

 although we looked for them. I have made inquiries of all white 

 people, whether missionaries, French officers, or traders, who have 

 made excursions into any part of the country inhabited by the Ba 

 F'an, but not one of them (with the single exception of an American 

 missionary, who has been in communication with that people for many 

 years, and speaks their language) ever saw a human bone or other 

 remains ; and the gentleman in question only came across a single skull 

 planted in the ground in one village, — an object to be met with else- 

 where in Africa than in the towns of the cannibal Ba F'an. That 



