REVIEW — TRAVELS IN WESTERN AFRICA. 
45 
is one— perhaps the chief — reason why so comparatively little is 
known concerning the horses and cattle of barbarous tribes, such 
as those inhabiting the wilds of Africa, into which Mr. Duncan has 
first dared to set the white man’s foot. 
Nor would one have been led to expect such intrepidity and 
resolution in Mr. Duncan even after having — as he informs us he 
has — passed sixteen years of home (not hard ) service in Her Bri- 
tannic Majesty’s Life Guards : stately prancing day after day, as 
is the custom of these fine troops, from Hyde Park to the Horse 
Guards and back, not being exactly the sort of preparation one 
would recommend for a trip, “ ankle deep in dry sand, with the 
thermometer at 118°,” through the arid plains of Africa. Never- 
theless, Mr. Duncan left the .Guards to embark in the notable 
Niger expedition, in which deadly enterprise he was miraculously 
one of five saved out of three hundred souls who fell victims to 
the merciless fever of the climate. Even this, however, did not 
deter him from seeking his fortune once more in the same pesti- 
ferous climes. After his return home, and restorement to health, 
he volunteered his services to the Royal Geographical Society, “ to 
proceed to Africa, and penetrate the Kong Mountains from the 
West Coast a peregrination in the course of which he made 
observations relating to divers strange and curious facts and inci- 
dents connected with the animal creation, of which, on the present 
occasion, it is our intention to give such account as we opine will 
most interest and best please our several readers. 
At Cape Coast, the landing port of our adventurer, where he 
sojourned five months, waiting for the most favourable season for 
travelling, and while there undergoing his “ seasoning fever” — a 
seasoning his unfortunate servant did not survive — he found “ agri- 
culture had made little progress, probably owing to want of 
horses, which cannot live more than a few weeks, and from the 
indolence of the natives.” — “ The breed of cattle here is very hand- 
some, though small ; but it might be greatly improved, and this 
would repay the expense very well, as the price of meat is so ex- 
tremely high.” 
English Accra, a British settlement on the Gold Coast, 
about sixty miles to the eastward of Cape Coast, contains, accord- 
ing ,to Mr. Duncan’s estimate, “ about seven thousand inha- 
bitants. Stock of different kinds is abundant ; and if any attention 
were paid to it, it might be wonderfully improved: but the Africans 
pay no attention either to domestic or wild animals ; even the dog 
and horse, the two most sagacious of all the animal creation, excite 
in them no interest whatever. If not driven to it, they will suffer 
a horse to stand for days tied up without food or water. In fact. 
