-The words ad facinus militare damilabiliter promptus might have been
written by the mediaeval chronicler of Dr. Sidney Spencer Broomfield, the author of Kachalola (Peter Davies, 10s. 6d.), so more apt was he to war than to diplomacy with the natives with whom he had to deal. He would not deny that he was high-handed, for more than once he sentenced natives to be hanged out of hand and saw that the sentence was executed. He naively remarks that he said very little to the Consul at Zanzibar about his trip on the mainland, which is not sur- prising. He thought it " great fun " to kill three lions and to wound a fourth, while he was as safe as houses," and some- thing of the same cast of mind is evident when he writes : " I was sorry about this rifle," after seven natives had been killed by charging elephants and the stock of a rifle broken. Not a word of remorse or concern for the dead ! In giving us his qualifications—" ivory hunter, prospector, specimen collector, pioneer, pearl fisher and doctor of medicine "—the author omits linguist ; and yet he claims to have understood the conversations of Africans round a camp fire after three weeks in Africa. This is surprising modesty !
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