VI PREFACE. 



Although hurt to the quick by these unfair and 

 ungenerous criticisms, I cherished no mahce towards 

 my detractors, for I knew the time would come when 

 the truth of all that was essential in the statements 

 which had been disputed would be made clear ; I 

 was consoled, besides, by the support of many emi- 

 nent men, who refused to believe that my narrative 

 and observations were deliberate falsehoods. Making 

 no pretensions to infalHbility, any more than other 

 travellers, I was ready to acknowledge any mistake 

 that I might have fallen into, in the course of com- 

 piling my book from my rough notes. The only 

 revenge I cherished was that of better preparing 

 myself for another journey into the same region, 

 providing myself with instruments and apparatus 

 which I did not possess on my first exploration, 

 and thus being enabled to vindicate my former 

 accounts by facts not to be controverted. 



It is necessary, however, to inform my English 

 readers that most of the principal statements in my 

 former book which were sneered at by my critics, have 

 been already amply confirmed by other travellers in 

 the same part of Africa, or by evidence which has 

 reached England. 



I may first mention the geographical part of my 

 work. No portion of my book was more discredited 

 than the journeys into the interior, and it will be 

 recollected by many persons that the learned geo- 

 grapher, Dr. Earth, a man whose great attainments 

 and services as an African traveller I esteemed most 



