Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/289

 Reviews. 267

and made no attempt to hinder his household from following their inclination in that respect, he seemed to have no desire for any standard better than his own, no appreciation of the degradation of his practices." He is given as an example of a " typical heathen, steeped in all the degradations of savage life ! "

Mr. Kitching insists on the shadows, and forgets to mention the h'ghter sides of native life. Sometimes this leads him to amusing paradoxical statements. On p. 146 we are told that the wives are mere chattels ; on the same page he deplores the tendency to avoid marriage ; in one place we are told that these people have no moral sense whatever, and a few pages later we learn that the decline of the marriage rate has a deplorable effect on the general morality. Such a saying as that dances among the Baganda and Banyoro are too obscene, or at any rate too suggestive, to be coun- tenanced where Christianity is acknowledged and professed, is strange reading to a reviewer who has recently visited the United States and seen the dances fashionable among the white popula- tion of that country.

It is a pity that the missionary " Advt." part of this book is so unpleasantly conspicuous, because it prevents the appreciation of the good material it contains.

"To get at the bottom of Africa there is only one method — long continued residence — backed by a proper sympathy with native ideas." Thus says Sir Alfred Sharpe in his introduction to The Great Plateau of Northern Rhodesia, by MM. Gouldsbury and Sheane, both of the British South Africa Company, and when he says further that the authors give a minute, reliable, and deeply interesting description of native life on the Tanganyika plateau, I am in entire agreement with him. Although the book is excellent reading throughout, the folklorist will take a special interest in chapters ii, iv, vi, viii, ix, xi, xii, xvi, and xvii, — Mr. Sheane's part of the work.

The authors are not blind advocates of the natives ; but they praise the unswerving honesty of the bush {i.e. uncivilised) native; admit his great generosity, sense of justice, and law-abiding qualities. They state how keen he is to acquire knowledge, giving as an example that many of the more advanced boys at the Livingstonia mission injure themselves by overstudy. As for their