102 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 55. 



ditions of the country that if peaceful means 

 had been used for its propagation, instead of 

 force, it might not be too much to say that all 

 Africa would now be under the sway of the 

 Moslem faith. The bearings of the two systems 

 of fetichism and Mohammedanism upon the 

 peace of mind of the traveller are portrayed in 

 a most telling manner. 



The trip to Say, on the Niger, was accom- 

 plished in eight months. Just before reaching 

 Ouro-Gueladjio he passed through one of his 

 darkest periods, some of the journey being made 

 on foot, his animals ha^'ing been reduced by 

 desertions and death fi-om twenty-iive to two, 

 and his men from forty -seven to seventeen. 



The question of the Saharan Sea is discussed, 

 on page 199 and the following pages, as viewed 

 from a structural standpoint, with reference to 

 the large basins known as the Dalhols. The 

 trend of these supposed branches of the extinct 

 sea, as well as the existence of the flabelliform 

 Egyptian palm in this exceptional locality, seem 

 to favor the arguments advanced in the text. 



Just beyond this point in the book, where he 

 deals with the regions about Argoungou and 

 Sokoto, we pass through one of his brighter 

 periods. With great good fortune he happened 

 to pass through this part of the country during 

 a lull in the proceedings — generally in a dis- 

 turbed state among these races. A few months 

 later, he would have had a hard time indeed, 

 even if he had escaped with his life from the 

 political ' cloud burst ' which took place over 

 the whole of this region. His state of mind is 

 well illustrated by the pretty sentence on page 

 238, upon the moral eflPeet of sunshine. This 

 also probably accounts for the rather rose-col- 

 ered description of the Peuls which immedi- 

 ately follows. 



■ In chapter X. (p. 269) there are some good 

 character studies in the course of the account of 

 his stay at Kano. The ' clearing house system ' 

 in use among these people is curious enough to 

 be amusing. Articles of fixed value are traded 

 for one another directly, but when small change 

 is involved the trader draws on his bank. This 

 consists in a mule load of cowrie shells, 50,000 

 of them composing a load and representing a 

 total value of $10. 



Kano is further the center of the cola nut 



trade. This article, which of recent years has 

 been introduced into the medical pharmacopceia, 

 is treated of in numerous aspects. The nut is 

 found in a belt lying between 6° 30' and 11° or 

 12° North Latitude ; and though it may be the 

 ' Coffee of the Soudan ' and correspond in all its 

 virtues to the betel nut in India, opium iu 

 China, the cigarette of a Spaniard, or the dog 

 of a blind man, it can hardly be accepted as a 

 sort of universal panacea. 



At this point we come across the discussion 

 of another phase of the slavery question, viz.: 

 the captives of war. They are captives in name, 

 but slaves in reality, and our author speaks of 

 the amenities of their existence. Their mas- 

 ters are forced to be easy with them, for the rea- 

 son that some day, through changed fortunes 

 of war, they may in turn occupy the same posi- 

 tion. And again, the number of these captives 

 is so great, as contrasted with the number of 

 the freemen, that an insurrection might change 

 the order of things. Such occurrences are not 

 unknown in the political or domestic life of this 

 untamed Eden. The captive is usually held by 

 his captor for a few months, until some mart is 

 reached where he can be disposed of, if he sur- 

 vives the harsh treatment of the march thither. 

 Then, if he is intelligent, he is pushed forward 

 rapidly and can attain to high positions. He 

 is provided with a wife, and his lot becomes 

 settled if he has a family, as neither he nor they 

 can be sold. It is often a matter of good for- 

 tune into whose hands he falls. In some in- 

 stances we read of the ' Captives of the Crown , 

 as being placed in charged of great undertakings 

 and expeditions of all sorts in the Soudan. 

 Hence, at least, so we are told, ' the captive is 

 a social and economic necessity in the Soudan.' 



From Kano he sends a covirier to Tripoli in 

 the month of January, 1892, and proceeds on- 

 ward to Kukawa on Lake Tchad, which point 

 was reached on April 10th. His description of 

 the stay at this place, which covered some three 

 and a-half months while he awaited the forma- 

 tion of a caravan to proceed northward, con- 

 tains many bits of information of value. Here 

 he was subjected to the infamous practice, in 

 tlie way of the extortion of gifts, which was 

 the means of almost ruining Earth and Nachti- 

 gal. Both of these travellers were stranded in 



