PREFACE.
It is the genial tax of literature upon Travel that those who have explored the regions of the uncivilised should open their bag of wonders before the world and celebrate their return to clothing in three or four volumes and a map. This exaction, in the nature of things, must shortly abolish itself.
As a minor traveller, whose assets are few, I have struggled to evade even this obligation, but having recently had to lecture on African subjects to various learned and unlearned Societies in England and America, it has been urged upon me that a few of the lecture-notes thrown into popular form might be useful as a general sketch of East Central Africa. Great books of travel have had their day. But small books, with the larger features of a country lightly sketched, and just enough of narrative to make you feel that you are really there, have a function in helping the imagination of those who have not breath enough to keep up with the great explorers.
The publication of "The White Ant" and "Mimicry" has been already forestalled by one of the monthly magazines; and the "Geological Sketch" is rescued, and duly dusted, from the archives of the British Association. If the dust of science has been too freely shaken from the other chapters, the scientific reader will overlook it for the sake of an over-worked public which has infinite trouble in getting itself mildly instructed and entertained without being disheartened by the heavy pomp of technical expression.
If anything in a work of this class could pretend to a serious purpose, I do not conceal that, in addition to the mere desire to inform, a special reason exists just now for writing about Africa—a reason so urgent that I excuse myself with difficulty for introducing so grave a problem in so slight a setting. The reader who runs his eye over the "Heart-Disease of Africa" will discover how great the need is for arousing afresh that truer interest in the Dark Continent which since Livingstone's time has almost died away. To many modern travellers Africa is simply a country to be explored; to Livingstone it was a land to be pitied and redeemed. And recent events on Lake Nyassa have stirred a new desire in the hearts of those who care for native Africa that "the open sore of the world" should have a last and decisive treatment at the hands of England.
HENRY DRUMMOND.
TROPICAL AFRICA.