The New International Encyclopædia/Pfeil, Joachim Friedrich

PFEIL, pfīl,, Count (1857&mdash;). A German explorer and colonist in Africa and New Guinea. He was born at Neurode, in Silesia, studied at the gymnasium of Göttingen, and in 1873 went to Natal. He learned the vernacular and stayed in the country four years; then (1879), after a visit to Europe, he settled in Orange Free State and with Wilson mapped the course of the Limpopo; but illness forced him to return to Germany. In 1884, having entered the employ of the Society for German Colonization. Pfeil went to East Africa with Peters and Jühlke, and in 1886 succeeded the latter as general manager of the company in Somaliland. This post he resigned in 1887, and entered the service of the New Guinea Company. His travels and explorations in the South Seas are described in his Studien und Beobachtungen in der Südsee (1899), and he also wrote Vorschläge zur praktischen Kolonisation in Ostafrika (1887), and Zur Frage der Deportation nach den deutschen Kolonien (1897).