Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/715

Rh time in performing the duties of his scientific commissions, and in preparing the narrative of his travels, his great work, "Sahara und Sudan," or "Experiences of Six Years of Travel in Africa" of which the first volume was published in 1879, and the second, bringing up the story to his departure from Bagirmi, in 1881; while the third is unfinished. In 1882 Germany needed a diplomatic representative in Tunis: Dr. Nachtisral was chosen as the most suitable man in the nation to fill the position. After remaining there three years as consul-general, a more important duty fell upon him—also by the designation of the great Chancellor of the Empire—that of going to the west coast of Africa to superintend the planting of the German colonies in the Togo country and the Cameroons. This was in May, 1884. He was there attacked by the fever which seems to be the inevitable doom of all white men who stay long on the Guinea coast. To get him away, if possible, from this scourge, he was put upon the German corvette Move and sent to sea. On board this vessel, a few miles out from Cape Palmas, he died on the 20th of April of this year. His body was brought ashore and buried at Cape Palmas.

Dr. Nachtigal, says one of his German biographers, was one of the "strong and enthusiastic representatives of German learning, uniting with complete devotion to science a heart warmly inspired with the idea of spreading abroad the power and civilization of the Fatherland; and he regarded it an object of life to press forward into unexplored lands and ever to be adding new objects to scientific cognizance."

"With Nachtigal," says Dr. Karl Müller, in "Die Natur," "has passed away one of the brightest stars of the literature of travel; a man who, treading in the footsteps of a Barth, was, like him, so happy as to come back and contribute no little in his turn to our knowledge of Central Africa. . . . With fifty-one years upon him, he still bore the expectancy of a longer life, even though the old chest-disease he had suffered from at home had not entirely passed away. For we had learned to know and esteem him all the more highly because in spite of his disease he was among the most active and most lively. His fate," Dr. Müller adds, "is a sad answer from West African Nature to German colonizing ambitions."

Everything living, said his friend Dr. Paul Gussfeldt, in a memorial address, "seemed to arouse his sympathy. His love for animals was particularly touching. I can hardly avoid a sorrowful laugh today when I think of his contracted house in Berlin, which he shared with a parrot and three little dogs as companions having equal rights. . . . What to others seemed a legitimate hunter's shot, to him, who himself had barely a hold on life, was murder. It is well known that Nachtigal, during the whole course of his travels, never fired a gun. The fact points out one of his strong characteristics. It shows that neither necessity nor fearful peril, such as he was exposed to in Bagirmi, could disturb the delicate stringing of his soul."