water."

"One day a tremendous gale of wind and heavy sea broke off large portions, and the wind acting upon the rushes like sails, carried floating islands of some acres about the lake to be deposited wherever they might happen to pitch." After meeting one furious storm in a navigation of about one hundred miles north, they came to Magungo, the place of which they had so long heard where the Nile enters the lake, about eighteen miles from the outlet by which it passes north. After going up the river far enough to prove its identity with that discovered by Speke, they began the really terrible task; the land journey north to Gondokoro, the village and slave depôt from which they had started. The details of this journey, which are most interesting, we omit. We copy, however, with real regret, part of the following passage, describing their plans at a time when they were both nearly dead between famine and fever.

We had now given up all hope of Gondokoro, and were perfectly resigned to our fate. This, we felt sure, was to be buried in Chopi. I wrote instructions in my journal, in case of death, and told my head-man to be sure to deliver my maps, observations, and papers to the English Consul at Khartoum. This was my only care, as I feared that all my labour might be lost, if I should die. I had no fear for my wife, as she was quite as bad as I, and if one should die the other would certainly follow; in fact, this had been agreed upon lest she should fall into the hands of Kamrasi at my death. We had struggled hard to win, and I thanked God we had won; if death were to be the price, at all events we were at the goal, and we both looked upon death rather as a pleasure, as affording rest; there would be no more suffering, no fever, no long journey before us, that in our weak state was an infliction; the only wish was to lay down the burden (vol. ii., p. 161).

At last the king, Kamrasi, who had left them to come as near as might be to actual death, in order to make his own terms, sent for them. Mr. Baker saved him from Turkish invaders by hoisting the British flag, and declaring his country annexed to the dominion of Queen Victoria. He recovered himself from the gates of death by manufacturing whisky from sweet potatoes to the great delight of King Kamrasi, who will be likely enough to poison himself and his people by the use he means to make of the secret. At last he managed to start once more homeward. Danger still dogged them by water and by land. The boat in which they descended the Nile was visited with the plague. Their followers died one after another. The vessel was so horribly offensive as to be unbearable. "All night we could hear the sick, muttering and raging in delirium; but from years of association with disagreeables, we had no fear of infection."

The extracts we have given will be enough to prove that

Mr. Baker's book is a contrast to most books of African travel, which are usually as dry and monotonous as the deserts they describe. Mr. Baker must have had tediousness enough, but he does not bestow any of it on his readers. He has given us one of the most readable and interesting books we have seen for a long time. This is owing both to the spirit with which he tells his adventures, and to his understanding how to leave untold, as well as how to tell. His whole voyage occupied about four years and a half, from March, 1861, to the autumn of 1865, when he once more came into European life at the great English hotel at Suez, and found himself among a crowd of his countrymen and country

women.

There are phases of savage life which exert an irresistible attraction over any who have once become habituated to them. Such is not the life of the African savage. Mr. Baker's journal says, "There is no difference in any of these savages. If hungry they will fawn upon you; and when filled they will desert. I believe that ten years' residence in the Soudan and in this country would spoil an angel, and would turn the best heart to stone." He believes, on insufficient grounds, that these nations are without the idea of God or of a future state, and apparently he would add of good or evil; and this leads him to suggest the strange theory, that they are the remains of a race older than Adam. He says, p. 316 :

Whether the man of central Africa be pre-Adamite is impossible to determine. But the idea is suggested by the following data. The historical origin of man, or Adam, commences with a knowledge of God. Throughout the history of the world, from the creation of Adam, God is connected with mankind in every creed, whether worshipped as the universal sublime Spirit of Omnipotence, or shaped by the forms of idolatry into representations of a deity. From the creation of Adam mankind has acknowledged its inferiority, and must bow down and worship either the true God or a graven image—a something that is in heaven or in earth. The world, as we accept that term, was always actuated by a natural religious instinct. Cut off from that world; lost in the mysterious distance that shrouded the origin of the Egyptian Nile, were races unknown that had never been reckoned in the great sum of history-races that we have brought to light, whose existence had been hidden from mankind, and that now appear before us like the fossil bones of antediluvian animals. Are they vestiges of what existed in a preAdamite creation?

To do him justice, the author does not seem to have been aware that he was touching an important religious question; or that any one could be shocked at his theory on religious grounds. Considering the prevalent tone of Protestant society in our

day, this is not wonderful. But we do wonder that he did not see that the theory of race, which he suggests in this and another passage, would undermine the first principles of the greatest and most important difference, between the social condition of the Christian and the heathen worlds. Ancient heathen society was built upon the theory that each race and nation was the growth of its own soil, and had its own gods, its own modes of worship, its own rule of right and wrong. Hence, the most civilized nation of the heathen world deliberately held, that towards men of any other race they had no duties, except such as they might voluntarily have undertaken by treatymen koлоvdo had no rights. The first principles of modern society, on the other hand, are built upon the great truth declared by S. Paul to the Athenians: Deus fecit ex uno [Greekvos aiμaros] omne genus hominum inhabitare super universam faciem terræ: and on the restoration of that truth to practical power in the Christian world, ubi non est Gentilis et Judæus, circumcisio et præputium, barbarus et Scytha, servus et liber, sed omnia et in omnibus Christus. To destroy the belief in man's unity of race, is not only to assail a most vital and fundamental truth of Christianity, but to undermine the very foundation of European civilization.

It is only natural that those who assume that different human families are distinct species, should go on to infer that like the different species of brutes, each has its own nature, and however it may be trained cannot rise above it. Mr. Baker accepts this consequence in the fullest sense. His estimate of negro nature is :

In childhood I believe the negro to be in advance, in intellectual quickness, of the white child of a similar age, but the mind does not expand-it promises fruit, but does not ripen ; and the negro man has grown in body, but has not advanced in intellect. The puppy of three months old is superior in intelligence to a child of the same age; but the mind of the child expands, while that of the dog has arrived at its limit. In the great system of creation that divided races and subdivided them according to mysterious laws, apportioning special qualities to each, the varieties of the human race exhibit certain characters and qualifications which adapt them for specific localities. The natural character of those races will not alter with a change of locality, but the instincts of each race will be developed in any country where they may be located. Thus, the English are as English in Australia, India, and America as they are in England; and in every locality they exhibit the industry and energy of their native land; even so the African will remain negro in all his natural instincts, although transplanted to other soils; and those natural instincts being a love of idleness and savagedom, he will assuredly relapse into an idle and savage state unless specially

governed, and forced to industry. The history of the negro has proved the correctness of this theory. In no instance has he evinced other than a retrogression, when once freed from restraint. Like a horse without harness, he runs wild; but, if harnessed, no animal is more useful.* There are productions necessary to civilized countries which can be cultivated only in tropical climates, where the white man cannot live if exposed to labour in the sun. Thus, such fertile countries as the West Indies and portions of America being without a native population, the negro was originally imported as a slave to fulfil the conditions of a labourer; and in the state of slavery the negro was compelled to work, and through his labour every country prospered where he had been introduced. He was suddenly freed; and from that moment he refused to work; and, instead of being a useful member of society, he not only became a useless burden to the community, but a plotter and intriguer, imbued with a deadly hatred to the white man who had generously declared him free. Now, as the negro was originally imported as a labourer, but now refuses to labour, it is self-evident that he is a miserable failure. Either he must be compelled to work by some stringent law against vagrancy, or those beautiful countries that prospered under the conditions of negro forced industry must yield to ruin under negro freedom and idle independence. For an example of the results, look to St. Domingo.

Mr. Baker's view, therefore, is, that no education, no training, no change of circumstances, can make of the negro anything else than an idle, bloody-minded savage; that he cannot be induced to work except by force; that our fundamental mistake has been to suppose that, in time and after due preparation, the posterity of African savages might be prepared for the influence of the same motives which operate upon Europeans-such as the desire of maintaining themselves and their families. We might just as well have hoped that, by careful training for several generations, we should teach our household dogs to speak, read, and write, or our horses to fly. In fact, negroes will work only under compulsion, they are not capable of any other motive.

Unfortunately Mr. Baker's theory on this matter exactly falls in with the prejudices of the educated classes in our days. Public opinion, in all free countries, but especially in England, is governed by reactions, and the last thirty years have brought about a wonderful reaction of feeling with regard to all the less favoured families of the human race. Mr. Trevelyan gives a curious and by no means pleasant account of the change of feeling in Europeans towards the natives of India. Thirty years ago the term

*Space alone compels us to make many omissions in this passage, which extends from pp. 287 to 294, vol. ii. If we could have given the whole, the author's theory would have been more strongly exhibited.

for them was "the mild Hindoo," now it is the "damned nigger." The same change is strongly manifested in the comments upon the wars in New Zealand and the Cape Colony. But it is strongest with regard to the negro. Thirty years ago he was decidedly the fashion. This was natural enough. The British public felt towards the emancipated slaves as a fine lady is apt to feel towards a remarkably ugly and useless pet-dog, upon whom in the exercise of her sovereign caprice she has been pleased to fix her affections; or as parents are apt to feel towards a spoiled child who is ugly, a little wanting, and very disagreeable in temper, and whom, on these grounds, every one else votes to be intolerable. In all such cases it is notorious that the general dislike only endears the favourite to those, who have come, somehow or other, to identify it with themselves. Julia Mannering (a keen observer of character) declared that her father patronised on this principle Dominie Sampson and a remarkably hideous pug-dog, because no one else could endure them. Then the tendency to make much of those to whom we have done some special favour and benefit, is as natural and as strong as that which leads men to hate those whom they have injured. The British public felt that it had made a real and great sacrifice for the negroes. It had bought them for twenty millions sterling, and it was not going to admit that it had made a bad bargain. Besides, a more generous feeling told in the same direction. negroes had unquestionably been illtreated, and were just restored to the rights of humanity. An educated negro was a lion in London society. He was not made quite so much of as Garibaldi was the other day, by plenty of people who heartily hate revolution, of which all the rest of the world regard him as the type. But the feeling was of the same

sort.

The

From all this any farsighted man might have foretold a great reaction. For the reigning enthusiasm could not fail to raise expectations which could not possibly be realized, and the disappointment must be provoking. The emancipated negro was to be a bright example to all the world of the blessed effects of British freedom and a proof of British wisdom. All this would not have been expected of any savages whom chance might have thrown upon some West Indian island. But too much could not be expected from slaves emancipated upon principles of pure humanity and at so great a cost. Strange to say, it was forgotten that one main argument against slavery had always been that it made the slave unfit for freedom and the master unfit to deal with free labourers. Because these