TROPICAL AFRICA.*
BUT for the suspicion aroused by the penultimate chapter of
this book, of which we have a précis in the last sentence of the preface—" Recent events on Lake Nyassa have stirred a new desire in the hearts of those who care for native Africa that the open sore of the world' should have a last and decisive treatment at the hand of England "—we should have said that this is the most delightfully artistic melange of travel and natural history in Africa that has yet been published. The "Political Warning" chapter in it, and the time chosen for its publication—when extraordinary pressure was (we do not say whether rightly or wrongly) being brought to bear upon the Foreign Office to enter upon a policy of action in regard to Lake Nyassa and the Zambesi—give it somewhat of the air, and even of the character of a pamphlet. But apart from this—very far indeed are we from saying, in spite of it—we should say that Tropical Africa, by the author of Natural Law in the Spiritual World, telling of his ex- periences in the course of a journey he took up the Zambesi and Shire to the mission-stations of Scotland, and along the plateau between Tanganyika and Nyassa, and to a certain extent also embodying the experiences of other travellers, will be the most popular and be-Mudie'd work on the subject that has been issued. After the numerous and enormous volumes which have been written upon Africa, it is a genuine treat to find Professor Drummond going to the heart of his subject in a volume of a little over two hundred pages, and yet adequately pravided with maps and illustrations. Then, as already hinted, this volume is eminently artistic. Whoever has read Natural Law in'the Spiritual World knows that its author is a remarkable writer as well as a remarkable thinker. Most African travellers have not been literary artists, and so Pro- fessor Drummond has an advantage over them. The word "charming," alike in its proper and in its afternoon-tea sense, is the correct adjective to apply to Tropical Africa, and—to be done with unfavourable criticism—we see in it a tendency on the part of its author to write in afternoon- tea and garden-party English, which, however good in its way, is often deficient in masculinity. Not that Pro- fessor Drummond is not trenchant. He speaks of "these black villains the [Zanzibar] porters, the necessity and the despair of travellers, the scum of old slave-gangs, and the fugitives from justice from every tribe." But then, "horrid creature" and "odious man" have been known to come from very pretty lips. Professor Drummond has humour, but it also is in danger of losing in fibre. When he was travelling on the Nyassa-Tanganyika plateau, some of his men deserted him. He summoned others who were on the point of doing likewise to his tent :—
" Like the Judge putting on the black cap, I drew my revolver from under my pillow, and laying it before me, proceeded to address them. Beginning with a few general remarks on the weather, I first sketched the geology of Africa, and then broke into an impassioned defence of the British Constitution. The three miserable sinners—they had done nothing in the world—quaked like aspens. I then followed up my advantage by intoning, in a voice of awful solemnity, the enunciation of the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid, and then threw my all into a blood-curdling (Nod erat dentonstrandum. Scene two followed, when I was alone; I turned on my pillow and wept for shame:'
What can be a more appropriate criticism on this than, "How very dreadful of you, Professor Drummond ! Was it necessary that you should weep after so very innocuous—and so very elaborate—a practical joke ? Should you not have indulged in a hearty laugh? When the Rector and the Curate get up a Punch-and-Judy entertainment for the sake of children or charity, do they find it necessary to write, each of them, eight closely written pages of remorse to the Bishop ?" Tropical Africa is quite a multum in parroo. It gives us travel in the chapters on the water-route to the heart of Africa by the Zambesi and Shire (which Professor Drummond prefers, and for good reasons, to the Zanzibar route), the East African Lake country, and wanderings on the Nyassa-Tangan- yika plateau ; sociology and moral pathology in the chapters on "The Aspect of the Heart of Africa" and "The Heart- Disease of Africa ;" science in "The White Ant," "The Ways of African Insects," "A Geological Sketch," and "A Meteorological Note ;" and politics in "A Political Warning." The last it hardly comes within the province of literary criticism to pronounce upon. Suffice it to say that what
• Tropical Africa. By Henry Drummond, F.R.S.B , F.G.B. London : Hodder and Stoughton. MB.
Professor Drummond desires and urges is that the whole of the western coast of Lake Nyassa, and the regions of the Upper Shire which are reached from the waters of the Zambesi, and the thriving settlements, the schools and churches, the roads and trading-stations of which are English, should be declared a "sphere of British influence." Apart from the political aspect of Tropical Africa, the general im- pression that the reading of Mr. Drummond's book gives is that of disappointment. It is not only that this portion of the Dark continent "has an impossible access, a perilous climate, a penniless people, an undeveloped soil," but somehow it is hardly possible not to cherish the suspicion that the game of reclaiming it for civilisation is not worth the candle. True, Professor Drummond proves that the African native can work, and that the soil of the region he visited is adapted for coffee-growing ; that rubber-plants abound, and that the castor-oil plant, ginger and other spices, the tobacco-plant, the cotton-plant, and many fibre-yielding grasses thrive there. But the supply of ivory will probably not last for more than fifteen or twenty years, and alto- gether there seems nothing to tempt the speculators of Manchester or New York to work others, or even themselves, into a craze for this region. Then, it must be admitted, that there is nothing specially attractive—certainly nothing gor- geous—in the forests of low trees through which mainly it seems to have been Professor Drummond's fate to travel. Indeed, the chief thing to be noted in Tropical Africa is man in his primeval condition. "To have lived here," he says, "is to have lived before Menes ; it is to have watched the dawn of evolution." It may be worth while once in a way, and for the sake of seeing "man without clothes, without civilisation, without learning, without religion," to penetrate these jaded and sun-stricken forests, "carpeted with no moss or alchemylla, or scented woodruff, the bare trunks frescoed with few lichens, their motionless and unrefreshed leaves drooping sullenly from their sapless boughs." But primeval man is not a marketable article,—or, rather, he is, and ought not to be. The most stirring chapter in Professor Drummond's book is that which treats of the slave-trade, which he calls "the heart-disease of Africa." There is not a single word of what he says on this point that will not meet with general approval, though whether the European Powers, with England at their head, will ever be induced to place, as he suggests, a small steamer on each of the great lakes of Central Africa, with an associated depot or two of armed men on the higher and healthier plateaux which surround them, is another question.
Professor Drummond's style is perhaps seen at its best in his scientific chapters, although here again, at all events as regards geology, we are told there is "nothing new," that "there is no unknown force at work, no rock strange to the petrographer ; no pause in denudation ; no formation, texture, or structure to put the law of continuity to con- fusion." But "The Ways of African Insects" (which are proved the greatest and smartest hypocrites in Nature), and "The White Ant" are delightful—indeed, exquisite—chapters in popular science. After what Professor Drummond says about the white ant, or termite—a small insect with a bloated yellowish-white body and a large thorax, oblong- shaped, and coloured a disagreeable oily-brown—it should become as much the pet of the savant as it is the horror of the traveller. The brick houses of the Scotch mission-station on Lake Nyassa have all been built out of a single ant's neat. The termites act. as the scavengers of the Central African forests, making away with all plants and trees, all stems, twigs, and tissues, "the moment the finger of decay strikes the signal." These termites are also invaluable as denuding and transporting agents. When rain comes, the ant-heaps are washed into the rivulets and borne away to fertilise with new alluvium the distant valleys, or carried downward to the ocean where, along the coast-line, they "sow the dust of continents to be." "The White Ant" is perhaps the most fascinating chapter of a fascinating yet disillusionising book.
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