2 16 



NATURE 



[August 17, 191 1 



It must have been a subject of regret to Mr. 

 Torday that Mr. Norman Hardy's health gave way, 

 and that he was not able to remain with the rest of 

 the party during the whole of the expedition. Other- 

 wise, his album of absolutely truthful pictures of life 

 and scenery in the heart of Congoland would have 

 been even more complete than it is. Of course, the 

 great part of the praise which critics may bestow on 

 this splendid ethnographical work (which, I believe, 

 is to be completed in a further volume), will be 

 awarded to Mr. Emil Torday, who conceived the 

 whole plan of the expedition, is exceptionally well 

 versed in the study of the Negro, took the greater 

 part of the photographs which so effectively illustrate 

 this monograph on the central Congoland peoples, 

 and has shown himself able for some ten or eleven 



year-, past to penetrate remote parts of British Central 

 Africa and of the Belgian Congo, where other 

 Europeans would have found it dangerous and per- 

 haps impossible to proceed, because they did not 

 possess Mr. Torday's unique gift of discriminating 

 sympathy with and understanding of the savage, the 

 semi-savage, and the half-civilised negroid. 



In the region more especially covered by this mono- 

 graph on the Bushongo, a few great explorers, like 

 Wissman, Wolf, von Francois, George Grenfell, and 

 perhaps most notably the American missionary, Mr. 

 S. F*. Verner, have crossed Mr. Torday's paths, and 

 owing to their writings we we're not entirely ignorant 

 of the es-Stence of this remarkable "Bushongo" cul- 

 ture in central Congoland. The Bushongo — this 

 seems a strange plural for* a more or less Bantu 

 people, but Mr. Tordav is so accurate in other matters 



NO. 2 i Si. vol. 87] 



that we presume he has interpreted it correctly — were 

 hitherto known as the Bakuba, and as such attracted 

 markedly the attention of Grenfell and Verner. Mr. 

 S. P. Verner, in a rather dicousu book, which he pub- 

 lished some years ago on his travels in Congoland, 

 gave some very good descriptions of this aristocratic 

 race or ruling caste, but it is possible that in his 

 enthusiasm for them he somewhat exaggerated their 

 physical approximation to non-Negro, Caucasian 

 types. He made them out, apparently, to be lighter 

 in skin-colour and more European in features than 

 they are actually. Vet from Mr. Torday's photo- 

 graphs and Mr. Hardy's paintings one realises that 

 there is some distinct infiltration of Caucasian strain 

 in the Bushongo or Bakuba, and in such of the sur- 

 rounding populations as those with whom they have 

 mingled their blood. Livingstone noticed this more 

 than sixty years ago in regard to the Baluba and 



Alunda, commenting repeatedly on their "Egyptian" 

 profiles. 



That the Bushongo brought with them at some 

 unknown date an exotic culture into the heart of the 

 Congo Basin, and that with their strain of Caucasian 

 blood they further inspired the local negroes to evolve 

 an art which in some respects is peculiar to central 

 Congoland, cannot be open to doubt when all the 

 facts and traditions collected by Mr. Torday are passed 

 in review. At the present day the Bushongo speak a 

 somewhat degraded Bantu language, much less purely 

 Bantu than tlie beautiful speech of the Baluba, or than 

 the Kongo tongue of western Congoland, or even the 

 Bangala of the northern Congo. But in former times 

 the speech of the ruling caste of the Bushongo was 

 known as the Lumbila. This language ceased to be 

 spoken about sixty years ago, but Mr. Torday was 

 able to collect examples of it, and submit them to 

 the writer of this review. These words of Lumbila 



