CURRENT LITERATURE.
THE GAMBIA.
The Gambia. By H. Penwick Reeve. (Smith, Elder & Co, 10s. (3d. net.)—The Gambia coast has been known from the days of the Phoenicians, and we fancy Mr. Reeve has derived consider- able pleasure from comparing the Gambia and its inhabitants as he knows them with the descriptions which we get from antiquity. He has set himself an object—two objects in fact —to bring home to us the value of the Gambia as a possession and to emphasize our obligation to the inhabitants. With the not far distant object-lesson of the Congo it behoves us to bear this in mind. If we cannot, by reason of international jealousies, interfere to protect those for whom we were trustees, we can at least keep our own hands clean. This is no easy matter. M. Reeve speaks with wise judg- ment of the impossibility of taking the native point of view. The mendacity of the African is an insuperable bar to comprehension, and reacts disastrously on the European attitude towards him. The patience and forbearance demanded of the average white man are a high, almost impossible ideal, but we must keep it in view and recognize that it is a burden we can never lay down. Mr. Reeve's views on the ethnology of this part of Africa are most interesting. It is a wonderful and somewhat kaleidoscopic effect that the migrations and conquests of the Mandingoes, the Tollofs, and the Fulahs produce on the reader. To the man on the spot the characteristics of tribal types have much more meaning and form a, most necessary branch of knowledge. The reader, how- ever, has no difficulty in realizing that such knowledge must add to the interest of an administrator's life. Animals and birds have several interesting chapters allotted to them. A sound and instructive volume this, with both old and up-to-date aspects of the country successfully portrayed for us by its author.
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