HVA) 
NATURE 
[ Marcu 4, 1897 
MISS KINGSLEY’S TRAVELS IN AFRICA} 
Ape record of Miss Kingsley’s wanderings in West 
Africa has been deservedly praised by many re- 
viewers. It contains most of the elements which com- 
bine to secure success for a book of travel. The land 
it deals with is familiar by name to all, but it is practically 
an unknown land ; for few visit it except in an official 
capacity, and few of the official visitors have the inclina- 
tion, or it may be the permission, to speak openly of 
what they have seen. Miss Kingsley has a sprightly 
manner and a thoroughly unconventional literary style, 
as beseems a lady travelling in a land so unfrequented 
of the tourist. The sparkle is, perhaps, too sustained 
to be altogether natural, and the reticence regarding 
her own sufferings, which must have been considerable, 
may perhaps lead readers to under-estimate the difficulty 
and dangers of her exploits. The book stands alone as 
— 
look flaws which impair the usefulness of the book if 
they do not impede its popularity. The journey described 
lay chiefly in French Congo and Cameroons—French and 
German possessions respectively—the topography of 
which is left nearly blank in most of our modern and 
otherwise up-to-date maps of Africa. In French and 
German maps, however, the river-systems, mountains, 
and villages are marked in abundant detail. Compara- 
tively few English readers have a foreign map of Africa 
at hand to refer to, and few books so urgently demand 
a good large-scale map as this ; yet no map is given, and 
there are continual references to places for which the 
average reader will search his atlas in vain. Perhaps a 
more serious fault is the humorous sparkle of the style, to 
which reference has already been made. Hyperbole is 
frequently carried too far, because only persons whose 
knowledge of the coast and of science in general is at 
least equal to Miss Kingsley’s, can disentangle meta- 
Fic. 1.—Caravan for Stanley Pool, Pallaballa Mountains, Congo. 
a vivid picture of West African life by a writer whose 
point of view is as nearly impartial as we can ever hope 
to see. Miss Kingsley is an enthusiastic collector, but 
not exactly a scientific person; she is sympathetic 
simultaneously with the cannibal tribesman, the mis- 
sionary, the trader, and the official, and in her whole 
book she does not say an unkind word of any one 
she met. As is usual with the writings of ladies who 
have travelled, her book is in many respects more out- 
spoken than a man would have made it, while stopping 
as far short of ethnographic fulness as is necessary in a 
popular work. The descriptions of tropical nature on 
the beach and the mountain, in the swamp and the 
forest, are occasionally brilliant in their pictorial strength. 
Yet we cannot, in a notice in a scientific journal, over- 
1} Travels in West Africa, Congo Frangais, Corisco and Cameroons.” 
By Mary H. Kingsley. Pp. xvi+744. Illustrated. (London: Macmillan 
and Co., Ltd., 1897.) 
NO... 1427501. 55) 
phorical from instructive statements. ‘‘ Beetles the size’ 
of pie-dishes,” steamers which “have a mania for bush, 
and the delusion that they are required to climb trees,” 
the air being “semi-solid with the stinking exhalations 
from the swamps,” or containing “ 99} per cent. of water,” 
and the like, are of course perfectly harmless pleasantries. 
But their recurrence shakes one’s confidence in state- 
ments which the reader has no @ friov7 means of pro- 
nouncing upon, such as the dictum regarding a large 
earth-worm. ‘He was eleven inches and_ three- 
quarters,” or the gruesome observation that “dead 
black men go white when soaked in water.” We feel 
strongly that those who are fortunate enough to visit 
regions where few can go, and who are endowed with 
such exceptional powers of description as Miss Kingsley, 
should consider the case of serious students who, when 
they ask for facts, do not care to be offered a cryptic 
joke. 
