MAJOR SERPA PINTO'S AFRICAN BOOK.* [SECOND NOTICE.] AFRICA affords eligible

opportunities for considering the Ant, and the observer is occasionally wise in running away from that moral-pointing insect. While Major Serpa Pinto was still in the Gaugnellas' country, he encountered a terrible specimen, revealed by the cutting-down of wood for his encampment :— " I saw," he says, "a sudden commotion among my blacks, who then took to their heels in every direction. On the very place which I had selected for my camp, appeared issuing from the earth millions of that terrible ant called by the Bilienos Quissonde, one of the most redoubtable wild beasts of the African continent. The natives say it will attack and kill an elephant, by swarming into his trunk and ours. It is an enemy which, from its countless numbers, it is quite vain to attack, and the only safety is to be found in flight. Tho length of tho quissonde is about the eighth of an inch ; its colour is a light chestnut, which glistens in the sun. The mandibles of this fierce hymenopter are of great strength, and utterly disproportioned to the size of the trunk. It bites severely, and little streams of blood issue from the wounds it makes. The chiefs of these terrible warriors lead their compact phalanxes to great distances, and attack any animal they find upon the way. More than once I have had to fly from these dreadful insects. Occasionally upon my road I have soon hundreds of them, apparently crushed beneath the foot, get up and continue their march, at first rather slowly, but after a time with their customary speed, so great is their vitality."

The giant-ants, as big as our black-beetles, who are enabled by their size to terrorise their industrious neighbours, upon whom they quarter themselves in luxurious idleness, are also notable creatures, but only the quissonde among ants will -attack man. All along his route Major Pinto picks up bits of information about the animal and insect life of Central-South Africa, on which we wish we could dwell. In describing the sufferings of the expedition from hunger during their long march to the Ambuella country, he says :—" Few sports. men in Europe can form an idea of what it is to hunt for actual food. If it can be called a pleasure, it has a good alloy of actual pain in it." On several occasions they were reduced to eating massango, or canary-seed, a dreadful edible, detested by the author with an intensity that is constantly breaking out in his book. Massango reminds the reader of the miserable desert-growth on which poor Burke and Wills, the Australian explorers, starved in the waterless plains. The carriers fell ill, getting goitre and inflammation of the stomach ; Major Pinto had fever, but he could not attend much to it, being obliged to doctor and nurse his invalids. Happily, the marshy banks of the Cuando abounded in leeches, and he applied the handy creatures freely. Well or ill, he had to march on, for the provisions were exhausted, and the road lay

• How I Crossed Africa : from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. By Major Serpa Pinto. Translated by Alfred Elves. London; Sampson Low and Co.

through a depopulated country, where leopards, cobras, and paroquets, whose shrieking was deafening, abounded. They never came upon elephants, or any old trace of them, though they mot a band of hunters making for a district in which those animals were said to abound. They found some beautiful, exquisitely-scented, unknown flowers, but were not so much affected by the discovery as by the first present sent them by the Soya of the Ambuellas. It was a dish of boiled Indian corn! This Soya, an old man, was a grand, well- dressed personage, who entertained his guest with an ex- cruciating performance ou a concertina! From him Major Pinto hoped to learn something of the country he was about to enter, but the Soya could tell him little or nothing. A curious description is given of a people called the Maces- saqueres, who occupy, jointly with the Ambuellas (of whom the author expresses-the good opinion quoted in our "First Notice"), the territory lying between the Cuando and Cabana°, the latter dwelling on the rivers and the former in the forests. The Ambuellas are barbarians, the Mucassaqueros are the true savages of south-tropical Africa. The author considers this curious race, which, in his opinion, belongs to the Hottentot group, worthy of the special attention of anthropologists and ethnographers. After the Esquimaux and the Australian tribes, these people seem to be the most wretched of human beings :—

" They construct no dwelling-houses, or anything in the likeness of them. They are born under the shadow of a forest tree, and so they are content to die. They despise alike the rains which deluge the earth, and the sun which burns it ; and boar the rigours of the seasons with the same stoicism as tho wild boasts. In some respects they would seem to be even below the wild denizens of the jungle, for the lion and tiger have at least a cave or don in which they seek shelter, whilst the Mucassaqueres have neither. As they never cultivate the ground, implements of agriculture are entirely unknown among them ; roots, honey, and the animals caught in the chase constitute their food, and each tribe devotes its entire time to limiting for roots, honey, and game. They rarely sleep to-day where they lay down yesterday ; the arrow is their only weapon, but so dexterous are they in its use, that an animal sighted is as good as bagged."

The two races are as different in personal appearance as they aro in habits. The Ambuella is a black of the type of the

Caucasian race, the Mucassaquere is a white of the type of the Hottentot race, in all its hideousness. The author could not succeed in making a sketch of any of the latter.

The Ambuellas, among whom the author had some amusing adventures, were the first people he fell in with who did not conceal their plantations in the forest. Their fields wore all in the open, by the banks of the stream, which leaves rich deposits in its overflow, and they dig deep trenches to drain the ground.

Irrigation, properly so called, the author has never known to be practised by any African tribe. In this country of richest pasture, and free from the terrible tsetse fly, there are no cattle ; the only live stock possessed by the Ambuellas is domestic poultry. To the question,—Why is this P the following is the answer : " Cattle constitute the greatest wealth of the African peoples, and, as a matter of course, always excite the cupidity of their neighbours. They aro the permanent cause of the un- ceasing wars between the West Coast and the Bih6." The Ambuellas are mild, sociable, and hospitable, and their women

are treated with more consideration than those of any other tribe within the authors knowledge. They are tolerable woods-

men, and skilful wax-hunters ; and they are capital fishermen. Their river is astonishingly rich in fish ; the author obtained eighteen different varieties, and the natives assured him that the specimens were far from complete. A very interesting account of the curious bird called "the indicator" occurs in this portion of the narrative :—

" No sooner does man penetrate into one of tho extensive forests of South-Central Africa, than the indicator makes its appearance, hopping from bough to bough, in close proximity to the adventurer, and endeavouring by its monotonous note to attract his attention. This end having been attained, it rises heavily upon the wing, and perches a little distance off, watching to see if it is followed. If no attention be paid to it it again returns, hopping and chirping as before, and evidently inviting the stranger to follow in its wake, and when the wayfarer yields, it guides him through the intricacies of the forest, almost unerringly, to a bees' nest."

Passing out of the Ambuellas' country, the expedition entered upon a series of difficulties and dangers which render this book one of the most adventurous records of travel over

written. Major Serpa Pinto precedes his narrative of a period during which he admits that his life was a constant torment, by some depressing observations upon the South-Central

African tribes. He is disposed to regard the civilising of the

Negro in Africa as a pure chimmra. "in order," he says, "to realise this dream of many exalted spirits in the Old World, there must be a white man for every black upon. the African soil, as by such means only can the element of civilisation be made to outweigh that of savagery." Of all the tribes he met with, the Bihenos alone had been brought in contact with the civilisation of the western coast, and concerning them he had been told by a friend :—" Mark me, the best of the Bihenos are incorrigible ; impress this truth upon your memory, and you are safe in dealing with them," Major Pinto bore this counselin mind, and succeeded in managing them ; but it must have been a severe trial to a man of such a disposition as that which reveals itself in the whole -of his work, to have to deal with such abominable and in. human wretches. He spares us the multiplication of instances of their hideous cruelty ; we wish we had not read those which he gives. "It was," he says, "after I became acquainted with the Hambundo dialect, that I learned to value them at their true price. Occasionally, at night, when quiet in my tent, I overheard the snatches of talk uttered around me, and no one would believe what I did hear." The reader finds no difficulty in believing that "no chief of bandits iu Europe requires, to maintain discipline among his horde of miscreants, greater energy and firmness than the European in Africa requires to lead and keep in hand savages of such a nature." When the river Ninth', was reached, the ills which flesh is heir to in South- Central Africa reached their height. Thorns to be struggled through that tore off the travellers' clothes, and picked .out pieces of their flesh ; lions roaring and hyenas " laugh- ing" all night about the camp, while the dogs barked incessantly, and the men lay shivering and burning with fever and were nearly wild with the pain inflicted by a cloud of flies as small as grains of dust that had swooped down on them as evening fell, and penetrated their nostrils, ears, and mouths,—such were the conditions of that "sylvan life" of which Major Pinto naïvely remarks that, "when it is thickly sprinkled with wild beasts, it is not pleasant." After the Ninda, among the affluents of the Zambesi, comes the Nhengo, with its overhanging trees and thousands of aquatic plants, running through an immense, spongy plain, the resort of myriads of snails and vast numbers of tortoises, and then the Zambesi or Liambai. Major Pinto saluted the great river with natural enthusiasm ; we are rather sorry that he shot two sportive hippopotami and a basking crocodile, in honour of his arrival. He had now to encounter new and unknown dangers (Capon° and Ivens had parted company with him long before, and their defection is not explained), and the romance of travel reaches its height in his narrative of his sojourn at Lialui, the new capital of Ungenge, Lui, or the Kingdom of Baroze, for by all three names is the vast empire, of which Dr. Livingstone has related the history, known to the world. King Lobossi, twenty years old, and with manners which might pass for good at a Euro- pean Court, and Gambella, his chief counsellor, a black Riche- lieu, double with a black Talleyrand, are an extraordinary pair. The author incurred many dangers at their treacherous hands, assassination and starvation included. When at length he got away and resumed his march, making scientific observations which are full of interest, a more terrible experience befell him. The man he trusted most, the blackest traitor of all, had been sent back to hurry up the supplies promised by King Lobossi. Major Pinto was resting, after an observation of the first satellite of Jupiter, when one of his men—a faithful servant, this—awoke him and said :—" Sir, we are betrayed ; all our people have fled, and have stolen everything !" It was true, three men only remained to help the European wanderer in the heart of unknown Africa, and the solo weapon that was left them for defence, or procuring of food, was "the King's Rifle " (the gift of King Louis of Portugal), with its cartridges, caps, and complete bullet-casting apparatus. But the lead for making the bullets P Major Pinto wont at once to the wood where he 'had that day epread out his net to dry. Had the traitors taken that, too P No, it was still there, kept outstretched by the weight of the lead fastened to its outer meshes ; and that lead meant safety and success. The journey of the four men from -that day forward is of intense, but painful interest. The entire responsibility, of course, rested with Major Pinto, and how he bore the burthon of danger, privation, and suffer- ing, especially as he was " devoured by fever, undermining his life," during the whole time, is a mystery indeed. He knew that at Patamatenga, some 375 miles from the place at which he was deserted and robbed, an English missionary

resided, and he determined to return to Lobossi's quarters, and try to get help from him to roach that spot. The king received him well, and told him he had not connived at the flight of his Quivibares ; but this Major Pinto knew to be false, for without the consent of Lobossi they could not have crossed the Zambesi. We cannot dwell upon the romantic episode of the explorer's detention by Lobossi, but assure our readers that they will find it deeply interesting ; and also the marvellous account of his canoe voyage on the Zambesi, when he got away at last. Of the great Gonlia cataract the author gives a beautiful description, and also scientific details of the whole system of the cataracts of the Upper Zambesi. Of the valley, he says :—" Pull as it is of beauty, fertility, and natural wealth, it exhales from its bosom, amid the aroma of its delicious flowers, a pestilential miasma." The river voyage abounded in danger, and when the travellers landed to seek provisions, lions and hyenas usually greeted their appearance. At last the voyage ended, just above a rapid, which is the first link of that chain of falls which terminates in the greatest cataract in the world, the Mozi-oa-tunia, or Victoria Falls,— afterwards eloquently described by the author, who denies, however, that they can be either depicted or described. Major Pinto then took to the land, and was rejoicing that the mis- sionary was not far off, when, on his arrival at Embarita,, on the left bank of the Cuando, ho was informed that a white man, who was neither a missionary nor a trader, was encamped opposite him on the right bank ! One would have to do what the explorer had done, and suffer what he had suffered, fully to appreciate his feelings, when he found himself shortly afterwards domiciled with the Coilhard of whom he gives au account so interesting that it will no doubt prove a mine of wealth to future compilers of books of adventure. Here we must leave this extraordinary and many-sided book, with only a brief acknowledgment of its scientific value, and its admirable arrangement, of its com- pendiousness and lucidity, its simplicity, and the unboastful brevity with which it narrates deeds of cool daring that stir the reader's nerves almost to pain. Such a deed is the author's measurement of the Victoria Falls (Vol. II., p. 159).

Major Serpa Pinto is justly and creditably anxious to clear the Portuguese nation and Government of all complicity with the trade in slaves carried on in the interior of Africa by natives of Portugal, and concerning which Livingstone and Cameron have made such horrible revelations. He claims that Portugal denounces and disowns these villains, that they are convicts who have broken out of the prisons on the coast, and sought a refuge among savages, where they may continue their life of crime, and that " to endeavour to make Portugal re- sponsible for the deeds of these African traders, is as reasonable as to make France accountable for those of the Communists, or Italy for the acts of the bandits of the Abruzzi."