The wonderland of the Eastern Congo; the region of the snow-crowned volcanoes, the pygmies, the giant gorilla, and the okapi

Front matter

CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

FROM

The Estate of L.L.eaman

Preface

S Sir Harry Johnston has been kind enough to interest

himself in this my first literary venture—even to the

extent of writing an introduction—I am not called upon to contribute a preface of any considerable length.

A preface I understand to be the author’s own particular page, where he may let his fancy roam, slang his publisher, and generally kick his heels; do everything, in short, so long as he propitiates his readers.

I may say at once that, being of a restless nature, and writing not being my forte, I would have renounced the composition of this book if I could honestly have done so. You, my readers, may of course wish to know why I have written it, if the work is uncongenial. One reason is that I have a conscience which dubs me a shirker if I leave undone something that is worth the doing; another, that although I have reached middle age and have spent more than half my life in the African wilds, I am still a little ambitious ; and the third is the spur of the naturalist and artist, who would wish to place before his public the beauties of this African Wonderland which still lie hidden from so many.

I have attempted to weave into my writing something of the fascination and spell of Africa, which bred in the solitudes of open plain and primeval forest, grip the traveller from first to last—the true Breath from the Veldt. To aid me in this I have quoted a number of verses from the poems of Cullen Gouldsbury, the African Kipling—so rich in this brooding spirit of the wild.

vii

Preface

If I had my way I would have, at least, a round dozen of coloured plates bound up with this volume, as I love colour and as many of the animals and scenes described in this book are inspiring to an artist of wild-life. But to this my publisher will not agree.

When reading this record of my journey and what I accomplished, I would kindly ask the indulgent reader to remember that this was a “‘ one man show.” By this I mean the expedition was organised and carried out entirely by my wife and myself, and, unlike many similar undertakings, we had no assistants and little influential Government backing. We had to rely entirely on ourselves and on our own efforts to carry us over the 3,600 miles of African soil across which we travelled.

The dedication of this book is justly due to Mr. James J. Joicey for the financial aid he extended to the expedition which was made on his behalf for entomological purposes ; therefore—as two dedications are impossible—I here pay my tribute to the steadfast courage and splendid comradeship of my wife, who accompanied me on this and many previous expeditions.

As the cinematograph pictures I obtained en route, which I had the honour of showing to the members of the Royal Geographical Society, evoked universal admiration, and as these may be considered as “screening’’ the book, it is therefore not too much to hope that my readers may also find this volume instructive and interesting.

My thanks are due to Sir Harry Johnston, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., etc., for his encouraging introduction to this book and to George Talbot, Esq., F.E.S., the Curator of the Hill Museum, for the trouble he has taken in revising my MS.,

viii

G@ Mrs. T. Alexander Barns.

G, Show the wealth of Insect Life in the Ituri Forest. Charaves and Acraeids fe e together on animal refuse. The Charaves are voracious feeders. Here may be seen brutus, liridates, zoolina, and eupale. There are no less than r2 large

Charaves and five Acraeids in this one bunch, forming a wonderful mosaic of colour.

Preface for his collaboration in writing the chapter dealing with the entomological results of the expedition, and for the arranging of the illustrations of Lepidoptera.

THE AUTHOR.

SS. Guildford Castle (outward bound).

New Year’s Day, 1921.

ix

Contents

CHAPTER

LAKE TANGANYIKA .

LAKE CHOHOA AND THE RUANDA .

Appendix

INDEX .

x1

List of Illustrations

FACING PAGE

KIVU GORILLA, SHOT BY THE AUTHOR AND THE BOY SALIM

Frontispiece MRS. T. ALEXANDER BARNS . : 3 ‘ : ‘ . Vili INSECT LIFE IN ITURI FOREST . ‘ . ix KIVU GORILLA, MOUNTED BY MESSRS. ROWLAND WARD. xvi TRANSPORTING IRON TELEGRAPH POLES . : : ; 2 ALBINO NEGRO CHILDREN ., : ‘ F : . 3 MALE AND FEMALE VARANUS LIZARDS 4 F RAPHIA PALMS . : : j ; é ; : ; 5 KALAMBO FALLS , ‘i : : ‘ ‘ . 12 CHASM AT FOOT OF KALAMBO FALLS . : : . . 13 THE “WHITE MAN’S TREE” AT UJIJI i ‘ ‘ - 4 THE OLD MANGO TREE AND STONE . ‘ ; F a 5 GOTTORP SALT WORKS . : i : ; ; . 18 HUGE FISH FROM LAKE TANGANYIKA ‘ : ‘ . 8 WA-BISA WOMEN . : . 19 BASKETS FOR STORING GRAIN IN MARKET OF BAIRA_..___ 330 FORTRESS OF KASULU . : : ; : . 30 AUTHOR “TAKING” A NATIVE DANCE ; F 3 . 31 KITEGA . ‘ ‘ , ‘ : : ‘ : : - 34 MUGERA . j . 34 AUTHOR’S WIFE, MSINGA AND LIEUTENANT DEFAWE _.___ 335 WATUSI NATIVE MAKING A SEVEN FOOT JUMP : . 38 COAST OF LAKE KIVU . . ‘ : ; F ; . 38 BARUNDI HERD BOY . : ‘ : ; ; 3 - 39 WATUSI CHIEFTAIN ‘ ? : F ; ; ; - 39

List of Illustrations

A NEGRO MILLIONAIRE . F 4 AUDIENCE CHAMBER OF SULTAN MSINGA .

WATUSI WOMEN

DANSE DE LUXE

SULTAN MSINGA’S LEADING SINGER

WATUSI BOWMAN .

“FLOWING RIVER OF LAVA” ;

LIP OF THE CRATER OF NINAGONGO .

DOUBLE ERUPTIVE SHAFT OF NINAGONGO, rgr1o ERUPTIVE SHAFT AS IT IS TO-DAY

EXTINCT VOLCANO OF KARISIMBI

ACTIVE VOLCANO OF NINAGONGO : AUTHOR ON LIP OF NINAGONGO CRATER .

COMMANDANT HOLLANTS’ AND AUTHOR’S CAMP SKULL OF THE GORILLA IN FRONTISPIECE VOLCANO OF MIKENO

FOREST OF SENECIOS AND BEARD-MOSS

HOME OF A SOLITARY “OLD-MAN ” GORILLA HEAD AND SHOULDERS OF A KIVU GORILLA .

MALE GORILLA SHOT BY AUTHOR

SUBSIDIARY CRATER OF NINAGONGO .

KIVU GORILLA SHOT BY AUTHOR

LAGOON CRATER ISLAND OF CHEGERA

THE “ PETROLETTE ” BEING TOWED INTO KISENJI .

BAHUTU DANCE

WHALE-HEADED STORK : : : HIPPO’ SHOT ON LAKE EDWARD . . .

HEAD OF A BUFFALO

List of Illustrations

KASALI MOUNTAINS

THE FOSTER BROTHERS

TWO LIONS SHOT BY AUTHOR

LARVZ OF A WARBLE FLY

CLOUD OF KUNGU FLY .

MONSIEUR FOURGET EMBARKS

BULL BUFFALO OF THE CAPE TYPE

BULL BUFFALO

SUSPICIOUS

“BIG TENT” CAMP .

GIANT FERNS .

MALE WART-HOG

PEAKS OF RUWENZORI MOUNTAINS .

CENTRAL MASSIF OF RUWENZORI MOUNTAINS . WATERSHED OF RUWENZORI MOUNTAINS CORNER OF THE ALPINE MOORS

HEATHER FIRE

OUR CAMP IN THE FOREST

WAMBUTE PYGMIES

AUTHOR, BEFORE LEAVING MBENI .

WAMBUTE PYGMY SUFFERING FROM LEPROSY .

PYGMY WOMEN AND CHILDREN

FEMALE WAMBUTE PYGMIES.

SKINS OF GORILLA AND OKAPI

WAMBUBA CANNIBALS COOKING MONKEY MEAT PYGMIES SHOOTING WITH BOW AND ARROW WAMBUBA CANNIBALS ;

BALEGA WOMEN FROM NEAR IRUMU .

ELEPHANTS’ TUSKS.

List of Illustrations

A MOBIRA WOMAN .

WABALI NATIVES AT BATAMA

ITURI RIVER AT PENGHE

ATUBENGWELE, A WABALI CHIEF

MUBALI NATIVES IN CEREMONIAL COSTUME WABALI WOMEN BEING WHIPPED

THE MAITRES DE DANSE : SPARTAN FEAT OF A MUBALI NATIVE.

WABALI DANCE IN PROGRESS

WABALI DANCE—ANOTHER VIEW.

AFRICAN BUGS

THE AARD-VARK

BEAUTIFUL DRACRENA TREE

CLOSE-SPOTTED HILL LEOPARD

TWO ELEPHANTS PASSING BEFORE THE CAMERA TUSKLESS FEMALE ELEPHANT

WEST NYASALAND ELEPHANT

FINE OLD BULL ELEPHANT .

SKIN OF AN ELEPHANT ,

ELEPHANT’S SKIN BEING TRANSPORTED ELEPHANT PASSING THROUGH BAMBOOS ELEPHANT ON SEMLIKI RIVER : HEAD AND TUSKS OF VERY LARGE ELEPHANT.

BELENOIS IN GRIP OF LARGE AFRICAN SUN-DEW BELENOIS FEEDING

MAP

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. 236

TO MOTHER AFRICA

AFTER TEN YEARS

I was pretty young and foolish when I came, The things I knew were fairly few and smrll— I was eaten up with shame, but you took me just the same, And you taught me, Mother Africa, to try and play the game As men play it out beyond the City Wall.

There ave millions who know nothing of your spell, And revile you for your cruelty and pain—

“Out in Africa,” they say,

“ Men are lost and thrown away,”

WE know better, Mother Africa! your children come to stay, And they never scale the City Wall again!

* * * *

In ten long years I’ve learned to love the chain (Though, sometimes, every fetter’s bound to gall),

Though you’ve tutored me in pain,

If God grant me ten again,

You shall have them, Mother Africa, so long as you remain Untrammelled, and outside the City Wall.

Cullen Gouldsbury in ‘“‘ From the Outposts.”

XVil

By SIR HARRY JOHNSTON

OME time in the autumn, perhaps the late autumn, S:: 1920 I was frequenting the map rooms and library of the Royal Geographical Society in London, in connection with an elaborate map that was being compiled to illustrate the extent of Africa covered by the twin families of the Bantu and the Semi-Bantu languages. On one such occasion, when leaving the building for the prosaic quest of lunch, I encountered the Society’s president. ‘‘ Hullo! How fortunate! Just going to write or telegraph to you, when I found out where you were. We've got up at very short notice a meeting to hear a paper from an extraordinary man —Barns is his name—who’s been exploring the regions you and Sharpe used to know—Lake Edward, Ruwenzori, Congo Forest, Northern Rhodesia, Tanganyika. Ive just got hold of Sharpe, though he’s very soon starting for Liberia, and here you are! Wonderful, when most people are out of London ! No. It’s not in our programme. But I couldn’t let such a chance slip. ... Remarkable films of African scenery, with wild beasts wandering about quite indifferent to the operator or his native followers; and really splendid slides of stationary subjects. You simply must come. . I shall ask you and Sharpe to propose and second the vote of thanks. You won’t regret it.”

I did not: nor, I think, did any one in the large audience that heard Mr. Barns, that saw Mrs. Barns, and that beheld the truly wonderful pictures of their cinematograph or the

x1X many remarkable lantern slides from their instantaneous and timed photographs.

We were given on this occasion the gist of the chapters in this book which treat of the region about Lake Kivu, and between Kivu and Ruwenzori, special stress being laid on the wonderful gorilla of those regions (a distinct species), on the active and silent volcanoes of the Umufumbiro or Virunga region (between Lakes Kivu and Edward), and the fringe of the mighty Congo Forest, along the Semliki River. But the author’s journey for his special collecting purposes seems to have begun early in 191g (after the Great War had been closed by an armistice), at the Katanga frontier of Northern Rhodesia, to have continued across and up Lake Tanganyika to Ujiji, and thence overland through the valley of the Malagarazi River and its north-western affluents, to the lofty tablelands of Burundi. From Burundi he and his plucky wife—as capable an African explorer and photographer as her husband—made their way to Lake Kivu, and thence through the great volcanoes of Virunga to Lake Edward, especially along the almost unknown western coast of Lake Edward (where the tameness of the elephants and other big game testified to an unvisited hunter’s paradise), whence they made their way to the Belgian post of Mbeni, on the middle course of the Semliki.

From Mbeni the author effected his climb up the slopes of the Ruwenzori range to an altitude of nearly 13,000 feet. From Mbeni he and his wife explored the still mysterious Congo Forest, and made their way eventually across that forest belt to Stanleyville on the Upper Congo, from Stanleyville by steamer nine hundred miles down river to Stanley Pool, from Stanley Pool by railway to

xXx the Lower Congo, and thence to England by an oceangoing steamer.

Not much of the country crossed was absolutely new to geography, to the white man’s knowledge in the twentieth century. The only portions probably not hitherto traversed by the white man were tracks between Lakes Kivu and Edward, and portions of the route—or divagations from the route—between Avakubi (on the Ituri River) and the main Congo at Stanleyville. But the whole journey was made full of novelty by the actions of the author and his wife. They have probably discovered many new species and even genera of insects through their industry in collecting and preserving ; they have thrown considerable light on the sub-species or even distinct species of elephant inhabiting the eastern half of the Belgian Congo right up to the vicinity of Lake Albert ; they have obtained a fine specimen of the largest known species of gorilla (originally discovered by Mr. Oscar Beringer) to the north of Lake Kivu and perhaps within the watershed of Tanganyika; possibly within that of the Nile.

Mr. Beringer’s magnificent specimen, which I believe is the one exhibited at the British Museum (Natural History), was obtained in the opening years of the twentieth century, not long after the writer of this introductory chapter had returned to England from the Uganda Protectorate and from a visit to the adjoining region of the Belgian Congo. Mr. Barns’s gorilla, obtained from the same district and at an altitude of ten thousand feet, is perhaps a little lower in stature, but clearly belongs to this new species, the Eastern gorilla, Gorilla beringeri ; distinct from the gorilla of West Central Africa (Luango, Gaboon, Cameroons and Ja River)

xxi c in detail of skull proportions, in not having quite such long canine teeth, in greater size of body and a greater growth and length of hair on the head.

The first white man intelligently to appreciate the existence of the chimpanzi and gorilla in West-central Africa, and to distinguish between them, was the English sailor, Andrew Battel of Essex, who was stranded on the Angola coast about 1592 and carried away into Luango across the lower Congo by an army of raiding negroes. He reported the existence of two kinds of man-like apes in that region: the ‘‘ Engeco”’ (chimpanzi) and the “ Pongo’”’ (gorilla), names which still persist in that locality. His writings were published about 1613, but little heed was paid to these details for two hundred and fifty years.

The existence and characters of the chimpanzi were realised in Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century, probably first by a naturalist in Wiirtemberg. But the name “ chimpanzi’’ we owe to the Portuguese, who derived it from the Bantu language of the northern Luango country where it is heard as chi-mpenze, chi-mpanzi to the present day. One of the several Hannos of Carthaginian history or legend apparently discovered the chimpanzi of the Sierra Leone coastlands some five hundred years before the Christian era, at the conclusion of an exploring voyage along the North-west Coast of Africa. But the skins brought back to Carthage were ascribed to “ wild men,” and the episode was forgotten or passed over till the discovery of the gorilla in the midnineteenth century. Then it was erroneously assumed that this Hanno had pushed his exploring voyages as far east as the Cameroons, and his name for the chimpanzi (“ gorilla” —very likely derived from Fula or Wolof words meaning

xxii

“wild man ’’) was bestowed on the larger ape, the “ gorilla,” first discovered in the Gaboon by American missionaries about 1847.

But although, through Professor Owen’s examination of the skulls sent home by these missionaries, the existence of the gorilla was determined as a form distinct from the chimpanzi in the coastlands of West Central Africa, north of the Congo, the emphatic identity of this large ape was not properly appreciated till after the journeys of Paul du Chaillu at the close of the ’fifties. Yet actually, before du Chaillu brought home definite accounts of the gorilla, a female gorilla was being (about 1855) exhibited through the English countryside in a travelling menagerie ; and outside the walls of an old farm-house in Berkshire was suspended a large gorilla skull, not realised as what it was till a few years ago, when it was figured in Country Life. The female gorilla of the circus died about the time of Paul du Chaillu’s exciting book and lectures of the early ’sixties, and was identified by the superintendent of the Zoological Society.

The existence of a large species of chimpanzi in the Bahr-alghazal region and the adjoining forests of North-east Congoland had been discovered by Schweinfurth in the early ’seventies. Stanley, myself, the Baptist Missionary pioneers —especially Grenfell—reported the existence of some form of chimpanzi on the Upper Congo (north bank) in the ’eighties.

Livingstone in 1870 had noted the existence of the chimpanzi (‘‘ Soko ’’) on the west side of Tanganyika in a form— Anthropopithecus troglodytes marungensis—which may be only a sub-species or variety of Schweinfurth’s chimpanzi. This chimpanzi of Marungu has been thought to extend its range almost as far south as the vicinity of Lake Mweru. In the

xxiii

‘nineties, Grenfell photographed a very large chimpanzi derived from the north side of Stanley Pool. It must have been about five feet three inches in height. He also recorded subsequently in notes the existence of the chimpanzi in the regions north of the Upper Congo, but never to the south of that river.

In 18g0, Stanley, on his return from the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, expressed his belief to the present writer that there was a form of gorilla in the dense forests of North-east Congoland; so that when I went out to Uganda in 1899, and crossed the Semliki into the Congo Forest in 1900, I made inquiries of the Belgian officials, who thought them most appropriate; for they actually had in their possession photographs of a gorilla killed in the vicinity of Avakubi on the Ituri River.

Early in the twentieth century (1902, 1903 ?) Mr. Oscar Beringer (an engineer, I believe, connected with the building of the German railway to Tanganyika) penetrated the Kivu region north of Tanganyika, and in the vicinity of the Virunga volcanoes obtained the magnificent specimen of the Eastern gorilla now named after him.

In 1905, George Grenfell stated in one of his private letters that in the district of Bwela, north of the Upper Congo and near the River Motima, he came across a group of gorillas seated in a tree, and that he killed one a little over four feet in height. (The incident is further described in my two volumes on “‘ George Grenfell and the Congo.’’) Grenfell knew quite enough about the anthropoid apes to distinguish between the gorilla and the chimpanzi; and from other scattered notes in his papers I gather that he considered there was a gorilla district north of the Upper Congo from the Mongala

XX1V

River on the west to the Lower Aruwimi on the east. Captain Guy Burrows, about 1900, photographed a gorilla said to have been killed near the Stanley Falls, to the east of the main Congo.

The gorillas identified as the beringeri species, identical with the large specimen in the British Museum and with that illustrated so splendidly by Mr. Barns in this book, come from a mountain region ranging from eight to ten thousand feet in elevation. Are they specifically identical with the types killed at Avakubi on the Ituri River and east of the Stanley Falls, where the altitude above sea level cannot have been more than two thousand feet? That is a question not yet determined, just as we are not able to say whether Grenfell’s gorilla of the northernmost Congo is distinct as a species, or even as a sub-species, from the Western gorillas of the Sanga River, the Cameroons, Gaboon and Luango.

The Eastern gorilla illustrated in this book and further represented by the very large specimen in the British Museum, appears to be slightly more ‘‘human”’ in the lessened proportionate size of its canine teeth and one or two modifications of the skull, the arrangement of the head hair and prominence of the nose.* (The Neanderthal species of man who existed in central, western and southern Europe from five hundred thousand to one hundred thousand years ago (or even later) had a nose very like an exaggeration of the gorilla type: depressed as regards bridge, but very prominent and bulging over and around the nostrils.)

The problem of the anthropoid apes in Africa at the present day may be stated thus :—

* The features and appearance of the Western gorilla of the Gaboon are admirably illustrated in the September Bulletin of the New York Zoological Society, and should be compared with those of the Eastern gorilla in this book.

XXV

The gorilla is distributed (apparently with intervening gaps) between the elevated Virunga volcano region on the east (almost on the frontiers of Western Uganda), and the coast region of the Gaboon and the Cameroons on the west. In the Cameroons, gorillas are found certainly as far north as the middle Sanaga River, and in a southerly direction their range extends into the Luango coast country, north of the Lower Congo.

The chimpanzis in several species or sub-species are found in the southern part of the Bahr-al-ghazal province of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and thence southward (through Unyoro and Western Uganda) along the western side of Tanganyika to the district of Marungu and possibly the vicinity of Lake Mweru in S. lat. 8°. Certainly the gorilla and apparently the chimpanzi, are not found west or south of the main stream of the Congo; the chimpanzi, however, is fairly abundant through the northern forested Congo basin to the Luango coast and the Cameroons. Chimpanzis are found in the eastern and perhaps the western parts of Southern Nigeria. They have never been reported from Dahomé, and their existence in the Gold Coast is not established. But they are still found in the Ivory Coast forests, in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and much of Senegambia up to the Gambia River. They are larger and superficially more gorilla-like in the eastern half of their range than they are in West Africa.

It would almost seem at one time as though their range in the Eastern Sudan brought them within the cognizance of the ancient Egyptians, for chimpanzis were certainly known to the Greeks in the Greek colonies of Mediterranean Egypt, whither they may have been brought as curiosities from the Sudan. In the Tanagra collection of the British Museum

XXVi may be seen several models of anthropoid apes, about five hundred to six hundred B.c. in approximate date, which can only have been derived from a study of the chimpanzi. One of these—an ape riding an ox—is such a remarkable reproduction of the Schweinfurth chimpanzi that I cannot think it can have had any other model. I imagine that this ape must have been occasionally imported into Egypt from possibly a farther north habitat than it at present possesses.

But in other directions we are left with a puzzle, for the nearest fossil relations of the apes of Equatorial Africa are only—so far—to be found in North-west India, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Here, of Pliocene date, have been found a few remains evidencing the existence in Northern India of anthropoid apes allied to both chimpanzi and orang-utan. From the little we know of it, the Palgopithecus of North-west India found in lower Pliocene formations is rather nearer the human ancestor than any of the anthropoid remains of Europe.

These last have been found in Miocene and Pliocene formations in south-central France, southern Germany, Austria and Italy. Professor Fraas, early in the twentieth century, discovered skulls of a gibbon-like anthropoid ape of the Oligocene period in Upper Egypt. Nothing living or fossil so near to the human sub-family as the chimpanzi and gorilla has, so far, been found outside Equatorial Africa, save these few remains of a chimpanzi-like ape in North-west India. Yet nothing human, living or fossil, has as yet been found in Africa which cannot be included in two species of true Man, Homo sapiens and Homo rhodesiensts, the Neanderthaloid type recently found in northern Rhodesia. The more transitional types between apes and men that have hitherto been

XXVii brought to light have been found in Java; in the Sussex county of southern England; in France, Spain, southern Germany, and Austria. From a variety of other suggestions we may consider the most likely birthplace of man to have been not any part of Africa and certainly no part of America ; but some region of western Asia not far from the mythical “Garden of Eden,’ midway in distance from the Java to which Pithecanthropos strayed, and Sussex, whither Eoanthropos penetrated before the Ice Ages developed both the hideous man of Neanderthal and the modern species of Homo sapiens.

Arabia, which should serve as a connecting link in the story of the mammalian and human peopling of Africa, has been many times blighted and scarred by the stupidly conducted forces clumsily controlling this little planet. Seemingly this peninsula is the remains of a vast region formerly extending farther into the Indian Ocean, which connected East Africa with Persia, India, and Malaysia ; and southern India in the first half of the Tertiary epoch was more or less connected with Madagascar. But first, at the close of the Tertiaries, a terrific outburst of volcanic energy covered a great deal of the Arabian area with an impenetrable, all concealing lava flow (hiding from our knowledge the fossils in its rocks). And next came the abstraction of its rainfall and the creation of its shifting and concealing sands. And lastly arose the Islamic “ faith,” a cruel parody of Judaism and Christianity, the worst form of knowledge-destroying religion that man has yet invented. Islamic fanaticism has abstracted Southern Arabia from the examination of educated eyes.

Nevertheless, though Arabia, through climatic and human recalcitrancy has been reduced to a negation, we must assume

XXVIiii from the little we know about it that as late as forty or fifty thousand years ago it was still a well-watered region, serving as a route between Syria, India, Persia and Africa, across which travelled the giraffes, the anthropoid apes, the buffaloes, many of the antelopes, the zebras and asses, and the early types of Homo sapiens. Another path for the peopling of Africa in the Pliocene and Pleistocene was the land connection across the Mediterranean, the Italian land-route, which down to some twenty to thirty thousand years ago cut the Mediterranean in two and linked up Malta, Tripoli and Tunis with Sicily and Italy.

At no very remote period and well within the human era, the mammals of Algeria, Morocco and Tunis resembled very strongly those of Eastern and South Africa at the present day. Much of the Sahara was then a shallow sea, but there was the broad belt of land, the Tasili-Tibesti plateaux and mountains, which connected Algeria and Tunis with the Central Sudan. Across this diagonal mountainous area travelled to east and south the white rhinoceros, the African elephant, several of the antelopes, the buffalo with enormous horns fourteen feet long (Bubalis antiquus), the eland and the hyena. An even more important route in the advance of the modern mammalian fauna over East and South Africa was the valley of the Nile and the mountainous region east of it, once directly connected with Arabia across the Red Sea Rift valley. From Egypt and Abyssinia came contingents of big and remarkable beasts, and probably the Negro and Negroid types of man to journey southward to another great scene of expansion: Trans-Zambezian Africa and Southern Angola.

South Africa, where, for the past hundred years, and more

XX1X furiously than ever since the Great War, the British, German, and the Boer settlers have been exterminating with reckless blood-lust a most magnificent mammalian fauna; South Africa, outside the forests of the Central region, offered a singular resemblance in its extravagant mammalian forms to the beasts of prehistoric Algeria, and of Abyssinia, Somaliland, and equatorial East Africa. Vestiges of this wealth were encountered by the author of this book and have been seen by many of those who from the days of Speke and Grant onwards have penetrated East Africa up to the borders of the Congo forests.

Not a few of the beasts and birds, living and extinct, which have been found in North Africa, Abyssinia, the eastern Sudan, Somaliland, and equatorial East Africa down to the sixth degree of S. latitude, are not only absent entirely from the central basin of the Congo but do not reappear till the Zambezi has been crossed and the South African sphere has been entered. A somewhat similar gap in distribution may be noted in the Americas where there may be great resemblances between the existing mammalian fauna of South America and that of pre-Glacial North America, with very little (to-day) in the way of living or fossil forms in Central America to connect them, the fauna not having cared to linger long in the attenuated connecting parts.

But in Central Africa there has been no lack of space for the maintenance of the southward-tending beasts and birds: we can only assume that the rather narrow connecting belt between north and south in East Africa has been caused by the existence of a vast recent lake over the inner Congo basin. Similarly, to account for the present distribution of beasts, birds, reptiles and fresh-water fish between North Africa

XXX and the Sudan and northern equatorial zone, we are obliged to assume that in prehistoric, but not very distant times, much of the Sahara and Libyan deserts were covered by a wide expanse of shallow sea, or by fresh-water lakes many times larger in area than the Victoria Nyanza and Lake Chad. There is some local evidence to support this assumption.