* * * * savage,' but who sit at home
in their studies and write about him as if he were a fossilized Etruscan or an Aztec." On the other hand, after reading Jungle Ways (Harrap, 10s. 6d.) the armchair ethnologist might retort that at least his seden- tary life has taught him the value of evidence. The photo- graphs are excellent, but why do they fail us at exactly those points which strain our credulity ? We are told a great deal, for instance, of the miracle of children being impaled on swords without injury, and there are photographs of them before and after the event : but the crucial moment is missing. Why ? In his earlier adventures among the Yafouba the author was aided by a young sorceress, named Wamba, who as his guide and companion was able to open many of the doors into the unknown regions of primitive psychology. But he seems to have got on equally well without her assistance in his later adventures among the Guere cannibals and the Habbe phallic worshippers, and even an ignorance of the language was not a bar to his being shown the most intimate secrets which had never been revealed to white men before ; nor yet a bar to his comprehending the most abstruse dis- cussions on the metaphysics of religion. The only dangerous negro he ever met in Africa was" Mr. Harris," an Ex-American negro who became a subordinate official in Liberia. The book is excellent journalism, verging on the yellow, and definitely unconvincing.
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