April 14, 1910] 



NATURE 



191 



inarkable breed of Basuto ponies and the crenlion of 

 a Basuto cavalry that has been, and will be, no 

 negligible quantity in the forces of South Africa). 

 Moshesh and his descendants, as soon as they saw 

 a chance, entered into friendly relations with Mosele- 

 katsi in the far north, and his son Lobengula, with 

 the kings of Zululand, and the more powerful clans 

 of British KafTraria and Northern Natal. In fact, 

 no sooner were they relieved from the menace of 

 Zulu conquest by the action of the Boers than they 

 strove by many subtle means to push the white man 

 as far away as f>ossible from the centre of South 

 Africa. 



Their dislike of the British was quite as great as 

 their dislike of the Boers. Between 1840 and 1852 



\_Fkoto. by Capt. French 

 Fig. 2. — Ketane Falls and Gorge. From " The Basutos." 



Moshesh and his chiefs made use of the British power 

 to stave off a Boer conquest of their countrj-. After 

 that they attempted an aggressive attitude towards 

 even the British, and inflicted on the soldiers of Sir 

 George Cathcart a very serious repulse. From 1858 

 onwards they fought intermittently with the Orange 

 State Boers (the Basuto being the aggressors), until 

 at last, getting worn out in the struggle with these 

 dogged white men, they invoked British protection in 

 1868. They were annexed as a Native State to the 

 government of Cape Colony in 1872, but an attempt 

 to disarm them brought on a fresh outbreak of war- 

 fare, in which the Cape forces gained no laurels and 

 General Gordon's intervention proved futile. In 1884 

 Basutoland was disannexed, and has henceforth been 

 directlv controlled by the Imperial Government. 



NO. 21 1 1, VOL. 83] 



Since 1884, when the native negro population cf 

 this State (which is nearly the size of Belgium) 

 amounted to about 170,000, the total number of the 

 Basuto has risen to nearly 400,000 at the close of 

 1909. Education, under French Protestant and British 

 Wesleyan missionaries, has made considerable 

 strides. The country, in fact, is so prosperous that 

 it is becoming a factor of increasing importance in 

 the problem of South Africa. Basutoland (the re- 

 viewer thinks) should have been made — if the advice 

 of the one or two statesmen-governors of South .Africa 

 had been listened to in the first half of the 19th cen- 

 tury — the Empire' State of South Africa, the principal 

 stronghold in all that region of the white race; and 

 ample territories farther north or farther south might 

 have been allotted then to the few thousand 

 Basuto, who asked for little more at that 

 period than peace, security, and an inalien- 

 able right to a reasonable amount of land. 

 Now, as things are constituted, Basutoland 

 is emphatically a black man's country,' and 

 from Basutoland radiates a vigorous impulse 

 which vvill go far towards securing for the 

 black man eventual terms of equal partner- 

 ship with the white in the administration of 

 the southern half of Africa. Lest we should 

 be petty-minded and regret this, let us turn 

 our eye3 to the recently explored regions of 

 Northern Rhodesia, portions of Nyasaland 

 and Katanga (greatly denuded of indi- 

 genous populations by various causes) 

 which now invite settlement, almost by the 

 million, on the part of adventurous white 

 peoples. 



The volumes reviewed deal mainly with the 

 history of this interesting Basuto people. 

 They are well illustrated by good photo- 

 graphs, and the numerous pictures of the 

 Basuto types show clearly the three negro 

 elements, imperfectly fused, from which this 

 section of the Bechuana peoples has been 

 built up. There is that of the Bushman (who 

 immediately preceded the Basuto as the indi- 

 genous occupant), of the ugly flat-nosed type 

 of Forest Negro or Pigmy (which reappears 

 elsewhere in Soutn Africa), and finally the 

 typical Bantu strain from East Central Africa 

 which imparts to many of the Basuto faces 

 refinement of outline and considerable brain 

 capacity. The scenery of Basutoland (the re- 

 viewer writes from actual experience) is 

 amongst the grandest of the world's land- 

 scapes, and Sir Godfrey Lagden has taken 

 care to emphasise this by " \\'ort und 

 Bild." The second volume closes with ser- 

 viceable notes on the Suto dialect ^ and 

 appendices of great usefulness to the 

 student of Africa. The book is, however, of very 

 great general interest. H. H. Johnston. 



THE OCEANOGRAPHICAL 

 MONACO. 



MUSEUM AT 



AS stated in last week's Nature, the inauguration 

 of the Oceanographical Museum at Monaco took 

 place on March 28, in the presence of representatives 

 of the Governments and navies of France, Germany, 

 Italy, Spain, and Portugal, and a great gathering of 

 men of science of all nations, who were invited by 

 the Prince of Monaco, and entertained as his guests in 

 his ancient palace at Monaco and in various hotels in 

 Monte Carlo. The inaugural fetes lasted for four 



1 Note Sir Godfrey's remarks on this, p. 645, vol. ii. 



