Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20.djvu/131

1867.] journey began, and led him through the hilly country of the Bakalai southeastwardly to the village of Olenda. From this point, before continuing his route, he visited the falls of the Samba Nagoshi, some fifty miles to the northward, and Adingo Village, twenty miles below Olenda. Starting anew after these excursions, he penetrated the continent, on a line deflecting a little south of east, as far as Mouaou Kombo, which is something more than two hundred miles from the sea.

In first landing from his ship, Mr. Du Chaillu lost his astronomical instruments, and was obliged to wait in the coast country until a new supply could be obtained from England. Midway on his journey to Mouaou Kombo, his photographic apparatus was stolen, and the chemicals were, as he supposes, swallowed by the robbers, to some of whom their dishonest experiments in photography proved fatal. The traveller's means of usefulness were limited to observation of the general character of the country, some investigation of its vegetable and animal life, and study of the customs of its human inhabitants, in none of which does he develop much variety or novelty.

Nearly the whole route lay through hilly or mountainous country, for the most part thickly wooded and sparsely peopled. There was a very notable absence of all the larger African animals, and those encountered seemed to be as peaceful in their characters as their neighbors, the tribes of wild men. The nations through which Du Chaillu passed after leaving the Commi were the Ashira, the Ishogo, the Apono, and the Ashango, and none appears to have differed greatly from the others except in name. In habits they are all extremely alike, uniting a primitive simplicity of costume and architecture to highly sophisticated traits of lying and stealing. They are not warlike, and not very cruel, except in cases of witchcraft, which are extremely dealt with, as, indeed, they used to be in New England. Fetichism is the only religion of these tribes, and they seem to believe firmly in no superior powers but those of evil. They are docile, however, and susceptible of control. Du Chaillu had the misfortune to spread the small-pox among them from some infected members of his train; and although all their superstitious fears were excited against him, the people were held in check by their principal men; and Du Chaillu met with no serious molestation until he reached Mouaou Kombo. Here he found the inhabitants comparatively hostile and distrustful, and in firing off a salute, with the double purpose of intimidating them and restoring them to confidence, one of his retinue accidentally shot two of the villagers. All hopes of friendly intercourse and of further progress were now at an end, and Du Chaillu began a rapid retreat, his men casting away in their flight his photographs, journals, and note-books, and hopelessly impairing the value of the possible narrative which he might survive to write.

Such narrative as he has actually written, we have briefly sketched. Its fault is want of condensation and of graphic power, so that, although you must follow the traveller through his difficulties and dangers, it is quite as much by effort of sympathy as by reason of interest that you do so. For the paucity of result from all the labor and hardship undergone, the author considering jthe losses of material he sustained cannot be justly criticised; but certainly the bulk of his volume makes its meagre substance somewhat too apparent.

the first of these clever and successful burlesques, Mr. Webb has travestied rather the ideas than the manner of Mr. Reade; and one who turned to "Liffith Lank" from the wonderful parodies in "Punch's Prize Novelists," or those exquisitely finished pieces of mimicry, the "Condensed Novelists" of the Californian Harte, would feel its want of fidelity to the method and style of the author burlesqued. Yet the essential absurdities of "Griffith Gaunt" are most amusingly brought out in "Liffith Lank" ; and as the little work makes the reader laugh at the great one, he has no right, perhaps, to ask more of it, or to complain that it trusts too much to the facile pun for its effects, which are oftener broad than poignant.

Nevertheless, in spite of our logical content with "Liffith Lank," we are very glad to find "St. Twel'mo" much better, and we only doubt whether the game is worth the candle; but as the candle is Mr. Webb's, he can burn it, we suppose, upon whatever occasion he likes. He has here made a