viii PREFACE. 



mann had gone too far in his corrections. In 18G2 a 

 French Government expedition, under Messrs. Serval 

 and Griffon Du Bellay, explored the Ogobai river, 

 and not only proved the general truth of my account 

 of that great stream, but showed that the country of 

 the Ashira, visited by me, had not been placed far 

 wrong. Dr. Petermann, on the receipt of the French 

 map, published in the ' Revue Maritime et Coloniale,' 

 reconstructed his own map, and again moved my 

 principal positions nearly to the same longitude in 

 which I had originally placed them. The text 

 accompanying the map (' Geographische Mittheil- 

 ungen,' 1863, p. 446 et seq.), contains an explana- 

 tion, couched in terms which I cannot but consider 

 as highly flattering to me. 



Similar confirmation of the accounts I gave of 

 the cannibal Fans have been published by Captain 

 Burton, the distinguished African traveller, and by 

 others. The fact of the native harp possessing 

 strings made of vegetable fibre — my statement of 

 which roused a violent outburst of animosity against 

 me — has been satisfactorily confirmed by the arrival 

 of several such harps in England, and the examina- 

 tion of their strings. Other disputed facts I have 

 discussed in the body of the present volume ; 

 such for instance as the structure and affinities of 

 that curious animal the Potamogale velox, concerning 

 which an eminent zoologist. Professor Allman, has 

 published a memoir, in which he shows that my 

 critic was wrong, and I was right. With regard 



