The Arab and the African. By S. Tristram Pruen, M.D.
(Seeley and Co.)—So very much has been written about Africa of late, that one is glad to note that Dr. Pruen does not claim for his book that it is a specially ambitious one, even although " it is written by one who has lived amongst the people as their friend and equal, and who has thus been permitted to see and hear things hidden from the passing traveller, and even from the resident who rules over rather than lives amongst the people with whom he is brought into daily contact." This book cannot, indeed, be more fairly described than a simply written elementary text-book of Central Africa, from the pen of a man, however, who has not required to get up his subject. Dr. Pruen works systematically through his different topics, which include the land, the vegetation and animals, the people, the climate and diseases, the traveller, the slave-trade, the Arab, and the mis- sionary. There is nothing savouring of exaggeration in any of the deductions that Dr. Pruen draws from the facts which have come under the observation of three years, and the chapters in which he describes the slave-trade, and treats of the wild animals of Central Africa, will be found very agreeable reading indeed. The volume contains a number of excellent if not very elaborate illustrations, and ought to be carefully studied before- hand by any persons who contemplate settling in Eastern Equa- torial Africa. Dr. Pruen is an earnestly religious man, and, naturally enough, takes a more hopeful view of the mission work that is being carried on in the region where he has lived, than has been recently adopted by travellers and others. At the same time, he admits that it is "carried on at present at a great disadvan- tage, and must continue to be until there are a sufficient number of well-educated, well trained, whole-hearted native converts ready themselves to carry the Gospel to their heathen brethren."
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